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TOBIAS 
SMOLLETT 



TOBIAS 
SMOLLETT 

BY 
OLIPHANT : 
ISMEATON 



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FAMOUS 

scots: 

SERIES 




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PUBLISHED BY"! 
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FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES 



The following Volumes are now ready— 

THOMAS CARLYLE. By Hector C. Macpherson 

ALLAN RAMSAY. By Oliphant Smeaton 

HUGH MILLER. By W. Keith Leask 

JOHN KNOX. By A. Taylor Innes 

ROBERT BURNS. By Gabriel Setoun 

THE BALLADISTS. By John Geddie 

RICHARD CAMERON. By Professor Herkless 

SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By Eve Blantyre Simpson 

THOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. Garden Blaikie 

JAMES BOSWELL. By W. Keith Leask 

TOBIAS SMOLLETT. By Oliphant Smeaton 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Birth — Parentage — Early Years 9 



CHAPTER II 
Years of Education 19 

CHAPTER III 
Wanderjahre, or Years of Wandering .... 32 

CHAPTER IV 

The Weary Tragedy — Shifts to Live .... 44 

CHAPTER V 
Roderick Random 57 

CHAPTER VI 

Peregrine Pickle— Ferdinand Count Fathom— Doctor 

of Physic 69 

CHAPTER VII 

Visit to Scotland— The Critical Review— The Reprisal 80 

7 



8 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VIII 

TAGE 

History of England — Sir Launcelot Greaves— The 
North Briton— Hack Historical Work— The Begin- 
ning of the End 95 

CHAPTER IX 

Smollett a ' Sweater ' — Travels Abroad— Adventures 

of an Atom — Humphrey Clinker — Last Days . . 109 

CHAPTER X 
Smollett as a Novelist 122 

CHAPTER XI 

Smollett as Historian and Critic 137 

CPIAPTER XII 
Smollett as Poet and Dramatist 147 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 

CHAPTER I 

BIRTH — PARENTAGE — EARLY YEARS 

1 Every successful novelist must be more or less a poet, 
even though he may never have written a line of verse. 
The quality of imagination is absolutely indispensable to 
him. . . . Smollett was a poet of distinction ! ' 

Such was the estimate formed by Sir Walter Scott — one 
of the most incisive and sympathetic critics that ever pro- 
nounced judgment — of the element of inspiration in every 
great writer of fiction. Experimentally conscious of what 
was of value in his own case, — himself the great Wizard of 
Fiction, — he would reason by analogy what would be of 
power to inspire other men. If the poetic faculty were 
indispensable for the production of The Heart of 'Midlothian 
and Ivanhoe, equally would it be needed in Peregrine 
Pickle and Humphrey Clinker. That the poetic stimulus 
is the most powerful of all, is a truth that has been re- 
marked times and oft. That it forms the true key to 
unlock the otherwise elusive and self-centred character of 
Tobias George Smollett, has not, I think, previously been 
noted. 

To write Smollett's life with absolute impartiality is more 

9 



io FAMOUS SCOTS 

than ordinarily difficult. The creator of Roderick Random 
was one for whom a generous charity would require to 
make more allowances than man is commonly called upon 
to make for man. Actions and utterances that might be 
and were mistaken for irritation and shortness of temper, 
were in reality due to the impatience of genius, chafing 
under the restrictions laid upon it by the mental torpor or 
intellectual sluggishness of others. The eagle eye of his 
genius perceived intuitively what other men generally attain 
only as the result of ratiocinative process. Smollett has 
unjustly been characterised as bad-tempered, choleric, 
supercilious, and the like, simply because the key was 
lacking to his character. Far indeed from being any of 
these was he. Impatient without doubt he was, but by 
no means in larger measure than Carlyle, Tennyson, 
Dickens, Goethe, or Schiller, and the feeling is wrongly 
defined as impatience. It is rather the desire to give less 
intellectually nimble companions a fillip up in the mental 
race, that they may not lag so far behind as to make inter- 
course a martyrdom. 

Smollett's distinguishing characteristic in the great gallery 
of eighteenth-century novelists was his exhaustless fertility. 
In his four great novels, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, 
Ferdi7iand Count Fathom, and Humphrey Clinker, he has 
employed as many incidents, developed as many striking 
situations, and utilised as many happily conceived accidents 
of time and place, as Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Henry 
Mackenzie, and Mrs. Radcliffe put together. His invention 
is marvellously fertile, and as felicitous as fertile. He 
makes no attempt to excel in what may be termed the 
1 architectonic ' faculty, or the symmetrical evolution and 
interweaving of plot. Incident succeeds incident, fact 
follows fact, and scene, scene, in the most bewildering 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT u 

profusion. There is a prodigality visible, nay, an in- 
tellectual waste, indicative of an imaginative wealth almost 
unique since the days of Homer. By some critics, follow- 
ing in the footsteps of Sir Walter Scott, a curious vagary 
has been rendered fashionable of introducing the method of 
comparative analysis into every literary judgment. In 
place of declaring in plain, straightforward terms the reason 
why they either admire or censure the works of a man 
of genius, they must now drag in somebody else, with 
whom he is supposed to present points of affinity or con- 
trast, and they glibly descant on the attributes wherein the 
author under consideration surpasses or falls short of his 
rival, what elements and qualities of style the one possesses 
which the other lacks, until in the end the reader is 
thoroughly befogged to know which is which and who is 
who. The higher criticism has its place in literary judg- 
ments as well as in theological, and the change is not 
for the better. 

Tobias George Smollett resembled William Shakespeare 
in one respect if in no other — that a doubt exists as to the 
precise date of his birth. The first mention made of the 
future novelist occurs in no birth register that is known to 
exist, but in the parish record of baptisms in connection 
with the parochial district of Cardross. Therein, under 
the date 19th March 1721, we read: 'Tobias George, 
son to Mr. Archd. Smollett and Barbara Cunningham, was 
baptised.' The day in question was a Sunday, and, as 
Robert Chambers very properly remarks, 'it may be in- 
ferred that the baptism took place, according to old Scottish 
fashion, in the parish kirk.' This tentative inference may 
be changed into certainty when we recall the strict Presby- 
terianism of his grandfather's household, in whose eyes such 
an injunction as the following, taken from The Directory 



12 FAMOUS SCOTS 

for the Public Worship of God, established by Act of 
General Assembly and Act of Parliament in 1645, would be 
as sacredly binding as the laws of the Medes and Persians : — 
1 Baptism, as it is not unnecessarily to be delayed, so it is 
not to be administered in any case by any private person, 
. . . nor is it to be administered in private places or 
privately, but in the place of public worship and in the face 
of the congregation.' 

So much for the baptism. Now for the date of birth. 
Here only second-hand evidence is forthcoming. In one 
of the unpublished letters of John Home, author o( Douglas, 
which it was recently my fortune to see, he mentions a 
walk which Smollett and he had taken together during 
the visit of the latter to London, when trying to get his 
first play, Agis, accepted by the theatrical managers. 
During the course of the walk Smollett mentioned the 
fact that his birthday had been celebrated two days before. 
The date of their meeting was the 18th March 1750. If 
reliance can be placed on this roundabout means of arriving 
at a fact, Smollett's birth took place on the 16th March 
1721. 

Genealogies are wearisome. Readers who desire to trace 
the family of the Smolletts back to the sixteenth century can 
do so with advantage in the Lives of Moore, Herbert, and 
Chambers. Our purpose is with the novelist himself, not with 
his ancestors to the fourth and fifth generations. Suffice it to 
say that Tobias George Smollett was the son of Archibald, 
fourth son of Sir James Smollett of Bonhill, a Dumbarton- 
shire estate situated amidst the romantic scenery of the 
Vale of Leven, and in the vicinity of the queen of Scottish 
lakes, Loch Lomond. 

Sir James Smollett, a stern old Whig of the Revolution 
type, to whom ' Prelacy was only less tolerable than 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 13 

Popery, and the adherents of both deserve hanging,' 
had risked property, prospects, and life at the time when 
James vu. staked his dynasty against a mass — and lost. 
So prominent was the part Sir James Smollett took in 
influencing public sentiment in favour of William and 
Mary, even while one of the Commissaries or Consistorial 
Judges of Edinburgh, that the grateful monarch knighted 
him, and the Earl of Argyll appointed him deputy- 
lieutenant of Dumbartonshire. 

A very different character was the novelist's father. 
Archibald Smollett seems to have been, in Scots parlance, 
' as feckless as his father was fifty? The characteristic of 
the rolling stone was pre-eminently his. Consequently, as 
regards moss, in the shape of worldly gear, he gathered not 
a stiver unto him. But that did not trouble him. Like 
Charles Surface, his distresses were so many that the only 
thing he could not afford to part with was his good spirits, 
which, by the same token, chanced to be the only good 
thing he had about him. His health was bad, his morals 
were bad, his prospects were bad, — for he never had been 
brought up to any profession, not having the steadiness of 
application to make labour a pleasure ; in a word, he was 
one of those interesting individuals whose idleness enables 
his Mephistophelic Majesty to make a strong bid for the 
fee-simple of their soul. 

Archibald Smollett, like most youths of good family, 
with whom, for lack of employment, time hangs heavy on 
their hands, was not above falling in love to lend a zest to 
the deadly ennui of life. Whether or no he obeyed Celia's 
maxim on the matter, and did so 'only to make sport 
withal,' is immaterial. The fact remains that, young though 
he was, the love-making ended in matrimony. He had 
been sent to Leyden to prosecute his studies — Leyden, 



*4 



FAMOUS SCOTS 



whose University, from about 1680 to 1730, was the great 
finishing school of Europe, with the lustre about it con- 
ferred by such professors as Arminius, Gomarus, Grotius, 
Salmasius, Scaliger, and Boerhaave. From this seat of 
learning young Archibald Smollett returned in ill health, 
but strong in his conviction that it is not good for man to 
be alone. Principles are as empty air if not reduced to 
practice. Archibald, therefore, electrified both the old 
Commissary and his two celibate brothers by announcing, 
not his intention to marry Barbara, the daughter of Mr. 
George Cunningham of Gilbertfield, in the county of 
Lanark, but the fact of its already having taken place. 
Probably, had the event been still in prospect, the stern 
old judge would have found means to check the course of 
true love on the score of his son's feeble health. Sir 
James had read his Utopia to some purpose, and was a 
stickler for legal penalties being attached to the union of 
persons of weak constitution. But there are limits to the 
intervention of even a choleric Commissary, and not all 
his indignation could put asunder what the Church had 
joined. 

Passing wroth was the old man, doubtless, and tradition 
reports that he considered carefully the alternatives — 
whether to cut off his amorously inclined son with the 
proverbial shilling, and thereby set all the gossips' tongues 
in the district a-wagging over man's inhumanity to man, 
and that man a son, or to give him his blessing, along with 
a small allowance, and thus keep the name of Smollett 
from becoming a byword of reproach. 

To induce him to adopt the latter alternative there 
were such reasons as these : That Miss Barbara was a 
young lady of great beauty and accomplishments — the 
Commissary had a weakness for a pretty face; that her 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 15 

family was as old as the Smolletts, though, having fallen 
upon evil days, it was not so influential ; and finally, that 
the two families had already intermarried about a century 
before, when the Cunninghams, by the way, had been the 
more powerful of the two. The old Commissary, therefore, 
gave the newly-wedded pair his blessing, probably con- 
sidering it better policy to bless than to ban what had 
already been done. On the young pair he settled an 
annual allowance, amounting, according to the present- 
day purchasing powers, to ^250, as well as the liferent of 
the farmhouse and lands of Dalquharn, on the banks of 
the Leven, immediately adjoining the Bonhill estate. 
Well done, old Commissary, thou wast wise in thy 
generation. To this day the district speaks of * Good Sir 
James.' 

But Sir James Smollett, if he imagined he had fulfilled 
all the duties incumbent on him in the circumstances, and 
might thereafter forget the existence of the inconvenient 
rolling stone, received a rude awakening. The stone in 
question accomplished its last revolution by rolling out 
of existence; in other words, Archibald Smollett died 
in 1 72 1, having only survived his marriage five years. 
He left a widow with three young children, James, 
Jane, and Tobias, wholly dependent on their grandfather's 
bounty. 

Of the cant of Puritanic Presbyterianism, of its gloomy 
severity, of the frowns it casts on all harmless pursuits, 
we hear a great deal in these days of cheap criticism 
and a ubiquitous press. That may be all very true. There 
is, however, one thing in which the type never fails. Once 
convince it of the binding nature of any social obligations, 
and not all the desires of self, or the weaknesses of human 
nature, will be allowed to stand in the way of its fulfilment 



16 FAMOUS SCOTS 

In such crucifixion of self-interest there is conspicuous 
moral heroism. Of a type of nature such as this was Sir 
James Smollett. With a sort of cynical sneer, that if 
he were in for a penny he might as well be in for a 
pound, the old gentleman continued the allowance to the 
young widow's household, though on a slightly reduced 
scale. Dalquharn, however, was still to be the widow's 
home, with liberty to make as much as she could out of 
the farm. As she was a shrewd, capable woman, who 
knew the full value of a shilling, and to whom the gospel 
of hard work was a living creed more than a century before 
Thomas Carlyle preached it, the chances were all in 
favour of her doing well. Nay, as the sequel proved, 
she did better without her husband than with him, and 
speedily became, comparatively speaking, a 'well-to-do 
woman,' as the Scots phrase has it. 

It was this unquestioning obedience to those provisions 
of the Mosaic law, 'Ye shall not afflict any widow or 
fatherless child : if thou afflict them in any wise, and 
they cry at all unto Me, I will surely hear their cry,' 
in which the old Commissary was a firm believer, that 
rendered the position of the widow and her fatherless 
children as secure as though they had been protected by 
as many deeds and settlements as would have filled a 
muniment room. The consequence was that, until she 
was no longer able to look after the farm, that is, up to 
the time when Smollett was preparing to go to London, 
Mrs. Archibald Smollett retained undisturbed possession of 
Dalquharn. She then went to live with her daughter, who 
had married Mr. Telfer, a lessee of some of the mines 
at Wanlockhead, and also proprietor of the estates of 
Scotston in Peeblesshire and Symington in Lanarkshire. 
The old Commissary, Sir James, was succeeded by his own 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 17 

son James, and then by his son George's eldest child, also 
called James, neither of whom left any issue. Singularly 
enough, the present holders of the estates are the 
descendants of Archibald Smollett and Barbara Cunning- 
ham ; the other branches of the house having become 
extinct. But by neither Sir James's son nor by his 
grandson was Mrs. Archibald's allowance reduced. 

Into this matter I have gone rather more fully than is 
warranted by the space at my command. But I was 
anxious to clear the memory of Sir James Smollett from 
an undeserved slur that has been cast on it by some 
biographers, who have been smitten with the mania for 
reading the facts of a man's life into his works. In 
Smollett's case, the opening chapters of Roderick Random, 
and the character of ' The Judge ' in particular, have been 
assumed, on evidence the most slender, as conveying a 
true picture of the novelist's early relations to his grand- 
father and uncles. But the statement, as express as it is 
explicit, by Smollett himself shortly before his death, that 
the scenes were written under a mistaken sense of wrong, 
and purposely over-coloured from motives of pique and 
resentment that had no foundation in fact, proves that 
young Smollett cherished mistaken ideas of his own 
importance, a failing from which he suffered all his life, in 
imagining slights where none were intended. 

The childhood and early boyhood of the youthful Tobias 
would not, therefore, be unhappy. Youth always looks at 
the sunny side of things. If his fare were plain and coarse, 
it was at least plentiful; if his attire were of the 
humblest, it was at least sufficient to keep out the cold. 
At this age hope is the dearest possession, and what Allan 
Ramsay said of his own youth may, mutatis mutandis, be 
applied to Smollett's — 



18 FAMOUS SCOTS 

' Aft hae I wade thro' glens vvi' chorking feet, 
When neither plaid nor kilt could fend the weet 
Yet blythely would I bang oot owre the brae, 
And stend owre burns as light as ony rae, 
Hoping the morn might prove a better day.' 



CHAPTER II 

YEARS OF EDUCATION 

But after the youthful Tobias had passed those moment- 
ous years when the science of suction and the art of 
following his nose constituted the principal ends of existence, 
the Scots pride in giving children a good education where- 
with to begin the world, led his mother to send him early to 
school. As usual in such cases, during the first two years 
of his intellectual seedtime he was committed to the care 
of a worthy dame in the neighbourhood, who fulfilled the 
duties so admirably described by Shenstone in his School- 
mistress — the only poem of a worthy poet that has lived — 

' In every village marked with little spire 
Embowered in trees and hardly known to fame, 
There dwells in lowly shed and mean attire 
A matron old whom we schoolmistress name.' 

But from the hornbook and the mysteries of ' a b, ab,' 
and ' t o, to,' he was presently called to proceed to the 
scholastic establishment of one of the most famous Scots 
pedagogues of the eighteenth century. John Love had the 
reputation of having turned out more celebrated men from 
his various seminaries than any other teacher of his age. 
In addition to Smollett, Principal Robertson, Dr. Blair, 
Wilkie, author of the Epigoniad^ and many other notable 
scholars and literary men, were his pupils. He was success- 

19 



20 FAMOUS SCOTS 

ively head teacher of Dumbarton Grammar School, 1 
classical master in the High School of Edinburgh, and 
finally rector of the Dalkeith Grammar School, — a position 
which, as Robert Chambers says, would not now be 
considered the equivalent of the one he resigned to accept 
it. Love was first the correspondent and defender against 
sundry attacks on his Latin Grammar, afterwards the 
antagonistic critic of the great Ruddiman, — one of the last 
of the mighty Scots polymaths, before the days of specialists 
and the extension of the boundaries of learning rendered 
omniscience, in a humanist sense, an impossibility. 

From Love the youthful Smollett received a thorough 
grounding in the classics, particularly in Latin. The days 
had not dawned when that human instrument of youthful 
torture known as ' the crammer ' had come on the scene. 
Education, if conducted on wrong principles in many cases, 
was, at least, rational in the end it proposed to accomplish. 
Boys in the eighteenth century were not treated like prize 
turkeys, and stuffed to repletion with all and sundry items 
of knowledge, whereof about one per cent, is found useful 
in after life. Love did not believe in taking passing sips 
from the cup of every classic author, and then relegating their 
works to the dust and the spiders. His was not the system 
to make a sort of fox-hunt scamper over Latin literature, 
from Nepos to Statius, or in Greek, from Homer to Lucian, 
clearing difficulties at a bound, and cutting the Gordian 
knot of vexed passages by the rough and ready method of 
omission. His pupils were the ' homines unius librV — the 
men of the single book, who are always to be feared. The 
consequence was that to the end of life Smollett ac- 
knowledged his indebtedness to Love. He took an interest 

1 At this school the celebrated George Buchanan had been educated, 
as Mr. Hume Brown indicates in his life of the Scots Scaliger. 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 21 

in the lad's progress, and, knowing the circumstances 
of his lot, and how much depended on his proficiency in the 
subjects of study, he paid every attention to him, and spared 
no pains to make him a thoroughly sound if not a very pro- 
found classical scholar. All through the long and laborious 
life of Smollett, the lessons of Love bore fruit. 
* Here, however, I must once more enter a protest against 
the ready credulity of several previous biographers, in 
believing the foul slander, — manufactured by some one 
utterly unacquainted with the true facts of the case, — that 
the portrait of the pedagogue in Roderick Rando7n could 
possibly be intended to represent Love. Disproof the 
most convincing is to be found in the fact that the dis- 
tinguishing characteristic of the pedagogue in the novel was 
his resemblance to Horace's plagosus Orbilius — the flogging 
Orbilius. But of Love's system the glory — and glory it 
certainly was — consisted in the total abolition of the 
degrading corporal punishment, in his successive schools, at 
the time when the sparing of the rod by any pedagogue was 
esteemed to be unquestionably equivalent to spoiling the child. 
As to the estimation in which the youthful Smollett was 
held by his companions, there is but scant evidence. He 
seems, like many another youth, whom the stirrings of great 
imaginings within were beginning to puzzle and in some 
degree to annoy, as being unlike anything his companions 
experienced, to have been masterful, irritable, and proud. 
He even appears, with a lad's lack of judgment, to have 
exhibited the snobbery of family pride, that most ignoble 
form of vulgarity. All through life Smollett betrayed a 
smack of this failing — a trait of character which, long years 
after, led him to surround himself with his poor and needy 
brethren in literature, to whom he played the part of ' the 
Great Cham ' of the press. 



22 FAMOUS SCOTS 

Mr. Robert Chambers, in his excellent biography of 
Smollett, in many respects still one of the best accounts 
of the great novelist's life and works, regards the influence 
of the surrounding scenery as being the main factor in 
turning Smollett's ideas towards imaginative and romantic 
themes. To a certain extent, as we have already pointed 
out, the charms of the district must have produced 
a deep impression on him. The vividness of his re- 
collections of them in after years, and the terms of 
passionate delight wherewith he spoke of them, all go to 
prove this. But there was another agency at work. The 
charms of our immortal English literature were slowly but 
surely casting their glamour over him. From the study of 
classics he had passed to that of Milton, Dryden, and of 
the Restoration drama, with close attention paid to that 
great period which had closed but a few years before his 
birth — the reign of Queen Anne. Chambers also states 
that 'Smollett, like Burns, was at a very early period 
struck with admiration of the character of Wallace, whose 
adventures, reduced from the verse of Blind Harry by 
Hamilton of Gilbertfield, were in every boy's hand, and 
formed a constant theme of fireside and nursery stories. 
To such a degree arose Smollett's enthusiasm on this 
subject, that, ere he had quitted Dumbarton School, he 
wrote verses to the memory of the Scottish champion.' 

But schooldays could not last for ever. Besides, the 
young Tobias ere long lost interest in the Dumbarton 
Grammar School. John Love had been translated to 
Edinburgh, and a new pedagogue had arisen who knew not 
Tobias. Accordingly, the lad began to plague his mother 
to allow him to become a soldier like his elder brother 
James. The matter, of course, had to be referred to the 
family dictator — the old Commissary. But that stern 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 23 

incarnation of Puritanic duty decided that while the family 
interest might procure the advancement of one soldier, two 
were beyond its exercise of patronage. Hence he insisted 
on Tobias being sent to Glasgow University, to prepare 
for one of the learned professions, offering to bear a share 
in the expense of his education. But as the old man died 
almost immediately afterwards, namely, in 1733, before the 
youth was actually sent to college, the latter benefited little 
from his grandfather's intentions, because in his will no 
provision was made for the children of his youngest son. 
But his uncle James appears to have proved more kind- 
hearted than was anticipated, and to have assisted him, at 
least during the first years of his course. 

During his attendance on the Arts classes in Glasgow 
University, — only one of which seems to have made any 
deep impression on him, namely, the lectures of Francis 
Hutcheson, Professor of Moral Philosophy, and father of 
Scots Philosophy, — he made the acquaintance of several 
medical students, who were then going through their 
curriculum, with a view to graduation in medicine. As in 
the case of Sir James Y. Simpson 1 it was the fact of lodging 
in the same house with two medical students from Bathgate, 
to wit, Drs. Reid and M'Arthur, which gave him the bias 
towards medicine that was to make the world so much his 
debtor, so in Smollett's case his association with these 
youths directed his thoughts also towards the prosecution of 
medicine as a career in life. In those days the difficulties of 
carrying out such an intention were not so great as now. 
Medicos were not then as plentiful as leaves in Vallombrosa, 
so much so that the great degree-granting institutions must 
for their own protection make the examinations increasingly 

1 See Sir James Y. Simpson, by Eve Blantyre Simpson — 'Famous 
Scots ' Series. 



24 FAMOUS SCOTS 

severe, in order that the survival only of the scientifically 
fittest may in time relieve the congestion. When, therefore, 
Smollett announced his intention to his mother and his 
uncle James (who only recently had succeeded to the family 
honours), they appeared to consider that the proposal was 
one to which they could give a cordial assent, although 
surgery had not yet commenced the wonderful march of 
progress achieved by it later on in the same century, 
and though the prestige of the craft, sadly tarnished by 
its association with the trade of the barber and of the 
phlebotomist, was by no means one calculated as yet to 
render its members proud of their connection with it — in Scot- 
land at least. The genius of the three Alexander Monroes, 
—grandfather, father, and son, who consecutively held the 
chair of Anatomy in Edinburgh University for a hundred 
and twenty-six years, namely, from 1720 to 1846, — of 
Gregory, of Cullen, and of other illustrious knights of 
the knife, was needed to efface the lingering associations of 
the razor and basin, and to crown the name of surgeon with 
undying laurels. 

This, then, was the career which Tobias George Smollett 
marked out for himself, hoping in the course of time, 
by hard work and assiduity, to obtain a position, first as 
surgeon's mate and afterwards as surgeon, in the navy. 
Only qualified surgeons were accepted by the Admiralty, 
and the prospect stimulated him to put forth all his 
exertions to qualify for the post. The friends in the 
Vale of Leven amongst them managed to provide the 
necessary funds. Tobias, in addition, was also apprenticed 
to a worthy man, Mr. John Gordon, who, in the quaint old 
Trongate of Glasgow, during the fourth, fifth, and sixth 
decades of the eighteenth century, discharged the dual 
vocations of medical practitioner and apothecary. Smollett's 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 25 

meagre salary or wage, eked out by what his mother and 
the Bonhill folks could furnish, was made to serve the pur- 
pose of paying his way through the medical classes in the 
University and of supplying himself with clothing. Mr. 
Gordon, his master, gave him a room in his house, and a 
cover was always laid for him at the good old surgeon's table. 
A striking insight is thus afforded into the proud, irritable 
nature of the youth, whom poverty, in place of teaching 
lessons of patience and gratitude to the kindly hearts that 
were smoothing his life's path for him, rather stung into 
angry repining against such indebtedness, as well as into 
emphatic asseveration of their action being no more than 
what was due to him. Humility was at no time one of 
the virtues in which Smollett excelled. His amour-propre 
was of so sensitive a composition that the least breath of 
contradiction made, so to speak, 

' Each particular hair to stand an-end, 
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.' 

That Smollett studied hard during these years, that, 
moreover, he took every means lying within his power to 
increase his fund of general knowledge, as well as to amass 
stores of that information which lay in the line of his own 
special studies in medicine and science, has been recorded 
for us by some of his early companions. Neither a laggard 
nor a dullard in his work was he, as is evinced by the 
fact that he was devoting attention to Latin, Greek, and 
philosophy at the same time that he was endeavouring to 
master anatomy and medicine. How he was able to 
accomplish the achievement of acquiring even a superficial 
acquaintance with the subjects named, at the identical 
period that he was serving in his master's shop from eight 
in the morning till nine at night, is a mystery. Strong 



26 FAMOUS SCOTS 

evidence is it of his zeal in the pursuit of knowledge, that 
he cheerfully prosecuted labours so onerous and so pro- 
longed at a time when his age, according to the most 
liberal scale of calculation, could not have exceeded from 
fifteen to seventeen years. But through the gates of 
knowledge he already saw a means of escape for himself 
from the grinding penury wherein it was his lot to be cast. 

John Gordon, surgeon and apothecary, to whom so 
beautiful a tribute is paid in Humphrey Clinker, appears to 
have shown the youthful Tobias substantial kindness. A 
sincere affection, on his side at least, existed towards 
Smollett. The latter, however, seems to have made 
him somewhat of a poor return for his benevolent dis- 
position towards him, though really it is questionable 
whether Smollett was responsible for his frigid tempera- 
ment, which showed no interest in anyone whose goodwill 
would not in some way react advantageously on him- 
self. Notwithstanding that Gordon aided Smollett both 
by precept and purse during his years of study, the latter 
was in the habit of satirising him behind his back in 
juvenile pasquinades. The same evil spirit of social 
Ishmaelitism, the feeling that the world had been hard 
on him, and that he was therefore justified by satire and 
sneers in * taking it out ' of anyone else who might have 
relations with him, was present with him until a year or two 
of his death. Shortly before the great end came, this 
vitriolic acidulousness, as well as the saturnine bitterness of 
his nature, became somewhat softened. He then wrote in 
Hu?nphrey Clinker, under the character of ' Matthew Bramble,' 
as follows : — ' I was introduced to Mr. Gordon, a patriot 
of a truly noble spirit, who is father of the linen manufactory 
in that place, and was the great promoter of the city work- 
house, infirmary, and other works of public utility. Had 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 27 

he lived in ancient Rome, he would have been honoured 
with a statue at the public expense.' Thus he made 
the amende honor able, but the description in the first 
instance of Gordon as ' Potion ' in Roderick Random was 
cruelly unjust, though Smollett in later years declared the 
portraits of both ' Crab ' and ' Potion ' to be imaginary. In 
early years such was the ' sheer cussedness ' of his disposi- 
tion, that even at the risk of offending his dearest friends, 
he could not refrain from firing off some of his satirical 
pasquinades. In fact, until the offending devil was whipped 
out of him by the lash of John Wilkes' stronger controversial 
pen, Smollett was too ready to indulge in satirical outbursts 
against friend and foe alike, where his fancied infallibility 
chanced to be impugned. 

Dr. John Gordon seemed to have had some dim, un- 
definable consciousness that his proud, irritable, unmanage- 
able apprentice was destined yet to do something in the 
world of worthy work. Sir Walter Scott, in his Lives of the 
Novelists, remarks : ' His master expressed his conviction 
of Smollett's future eminence in very homely but ex- 
pressive terms, when some of his neighbours were boasting 
the superior decorum and propriety of the pupils they 
possessed. " It may be all very true," said the keen- 
sighted Mr. Gordon: "but give me before" them all my 
own bubbly-nosed callant with the stane in his pouch." ' 
And Scott adds that, without attempting to render the 
above into English, Southern readers ought to be informed 
that the words contain a faithful sketch of a negligent, 
unlucky, but spirited urchin, never without some mis- 
chievous prank in his head, and a stone in his pocket 
ready to execute it. Better portrait than this of the young 
Tobias could not be desired. Only one other boyish trait 
shall we add to illustrate his readiness of resource in extri- 



28 FAMOUS SCOTS 

eating himself and others from awkward predicaments. 
From Dr. Moore's Life of Smollett we take it — a volume 
upon which all succeeding biographers have had to draw, 
as he had the privilege of personal intercourse with 
the novelist. ' On a winter evening, when the streets were 
covered with snow, Smollett happened to be engaged 
in a snowball fight with a few boys of his own age. 
Among his associates was the apprentice of that surgeon 
who is supposed to have been delineated under the name 
of "Crab" in Roderick Random. He entered his shop while 
his apprentice was in the heat of the engagement. On the 
return of the latter, the master remonstrated with him 
severely for his negligence in quitting the shop. The 
youth excused himself by saying, that while he was em- 
ployed in making up a prescription, a fellow hit him with 
a snowball in the teeth, and that he had been in pursuit 
of the delinquent. " A mighty probable story, truly," said 
the master in an ironical tone. "I wonder how long I 
should stand here," added he, " before it would enter into 
mortal man's head to throw a snowball at me." While he 
was holding his head erect with a most scornful air, he 
received a very severe blow in the face by a snowball. 
Smollett, who stood concealed behind the pillar at the 
shop door, had heard the dialogue, and, perceiving that his 
companion was puzzled for an answer, he extricated him 
by a repartee equally smart and apropos? 

But it must not be supposed, pardonable though it might 
be, considering his early love of rollicking fun, that all his 
spare time was spent in roistering horseplay like the above. 
Such an incident as it must assuredly be relegated to the 
early days of apprenticeship. Meagre though the facts are 
which have descended to us of his residence in Glasgow, 
that he studied both hard and perseveringly is proved 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 29 

by the position he secured in his final medical examination. 
Not for a moment do I desire to institute any comparison 
between the standard or extent of requirements demanded in 
order to qualify for a medical degree nowadays, and that 
which gave Smollett his first step on the medical ladder. 
In those days physicians were in reality supervised by no 
competent board as to their qualifications, and surgeons, 
despite the navy regulations, were in a case very little 
better. At the same time, to accept the description 
Smollett gives in Roderick Random of the ' first and only ' 
professional examination candidates were expected to 
undergo prior to obtaining an appointment in the service, 
would be uncharitable. The creator of Roderick Random 
was still in his youthfully exuberant period, when fidelity 
to fact was esteemed by him as a very secondary considera- 
tion, provided a piquant, sarcastic colouring was imparted 
to the incidents. Not until he became a historian did 
Smollett really learn, in a literary sense, to recognise 
the value of truthfulness in delineation. 

From the records of Glasgow University for 1738-39, 
the facts are to be gleaned that he passed with approbation 
his examination in anatomy and medicine, and was there- 
after qualified to practise as a surgeon. But whether 
comprehensive or not as a course of medical study, the 
curriculum was sufficient to endow him with a knowledge 
of his profession, quite adequate for all the professional 
calls afterwards made on it. From the unconscious testi- 
mony of his own works, in the number and accuracy of the 
medical references contained therein, we are able to gauge 
the range and depth of his surgical and scientific know- 
ledge. For the times wherein he lived, his acquaintance 
with matters the most recondite was extraordinary. 

Not only, however, had his studies been of a scientifico- 



3 o FAMOUS SCOTS 

medical character. English literature in more than one 
of its manifold departments was made the subject of 
systematic reading. To the plays of Otway, Davenant, 
Dryden, Rowe, Southerne, and other post-Revolution 
tragedy writers, he devoted close attention. To the 
romantic tales of French literature, and to their imitations 
by Robert Greene, Mrs. Aphra Behn, Mrs. Manley, and 
others, he likewise turned with delight, while we learn from 
his own correspondence at this period that he drank deep 
draughts of Milton, Cowley, and Dryden, whose earlier 
poems he especially admired. The fruit of these studies 
appeared in a tragedy entitled The Regicide^ written during 
the last year of his University work. Dealing with an 
outstanding event in early Scottish history, an event that 
afforded scope for considerable diversity of opinion as to 
the nobility or otherwise of the motives actuating the 
murderers of James i., the drama could have been made a 
great psychological and ethical study in the hands of a 
stronger writer. But as Smollett was neither a Cowley nor 
a Milton, able to produce verse at thirteen and sixteen 
worthy to be compared with the work of men twenty years 
their seniors, The Regicide is but a sorry production. 
A curious problem how far a man is fitted to act as his 
own critic is raised by The Regicide. Nine readers out of 
every ten who peruse the work will toss it on one side 
contemptuously as the immature ravings of a callow poet. 
Yet, until he had been five years editor of the Critical 
Review^ — that olla podrida of everything that was not 
criticism, along with a great deal that was of the best type 
of it, — he believed almost as implicitly as in his own 
salvation, that The Regicide was not much less notable a 
play than any of Shakespeare's, but had been sacrificed by 
the spleen of envious rivals and knavish managers. But 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 31 

the point settled by it at this stage of our inquiry is that 
young Tobias had not idled his time during his University 
days. Not only had he taken a good place in the estimation 
of his examiners, but the fruit of the occupation of his 
spare time is a tragedy, for a youth of nineteen a sufficiently 
notable achievement, though not by any means so when we 
regard it as the mature expression of manhood's ideas, as 
Smollett later on asserted it to be. In 1738-9, Smollett 
completed his studies, passed his examination, and then 
faced the future manfully, to see what indications of weal or 
of woe it might hold for him. 



CHAPTER III 

WANDERJAHRE 

Smollett's Lehrjahre were over, his Wanderjahre were 
about to commence. After passing his examination in 
Glasgow, he returned for a time to his mother's house 
at Dalquharn, glad once more to feel himself among the 
scenes of his early boyhood. Changes great and manifold 
had, however, taken place there. His grandfather had, as 
we have seen, died some years before, so had his uncle, 
James Smollett ; and now another James, the son of the old 
Commissary's second son, George, and therefore a full 
cousin of Tobias, was laird of Bonhill. His mother, though 
still undisturbed in her tenancy of Dalquharn, was preparing 
to spend at least one half of each year with her daughter 
Jane, Smollett's only sister, who had a month or two before 
been married to Mr. Telfer. Home was no longer home 
to him. His eldest brother was away with his regiment, 
the friends of boyhood's years were either scattered or had 
formed new ties. He felt, as he said in one of his letters, 
'like a bird that returns to find its nest torn down and 
harried.' 

For him in his new profession there was of course no 
opening in his native district. The thriving village of 
Renton did not come into existence until 1782, eleven 
years after Smollett's death. Dumbarton also was well 
supplied with medical practitioners ; therefore his only 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 33 

chance lay in going farther afield. His mother would have 
liked to keep her Benjamin near her, but Benjamin had all 
the prodigal son's love of roving without his vices. Besides, 
his studies in English literature had inflamed him with the 
desire to throw himself into the great literary gladiatorial 
arena — London. His friends were overborne by his 
enthusiasm. He was brimming over with all youth's 
sanguine hopes. He would succeed, in fact, he could not 
fail to succeed, was his insistent assurance. Alas ! he had 
yet to learn in the hard school of disappointment that in 
nine cases out of ten the battle is not to the strong, nor the 
race to the swift, but that literary success then as now was 
a lottery, wherein the least worthy often bears away the 
prize. 

The days were past when the head of the family, the 
laird of Bonhill, could afford material assistance to any 
youthful scion of the house proceeding out into the battle 
of life. Beyond good wishes and a bulky sheaf of 
introductions, his cousin, James Smollett, had little to give 
Tobias. As it was, however, the future novelist carried 
away from his native place the best of all recommendations 
and heritages, an unsullied character, with an indomitable 
love of honest independence that atones for a multitude of 
less lovely traits. 'What kind of work you individually 
can do . . . the first of all problems for a man to find out, 
that is the thing a man is born to in all epochs,' were the 
wise and weighty words of Thomas Carlyle in his Rectorial 
address. To Tobias Smollett the problem in question was 
one whereto he applied himself with all youth's jaunty 
assurance. At nineteen the point at issue usually is not 
$ What career am I fit for ? ' but ' What career shall I choose ? ' 
a faculty, a capacity for all being confidently presupposed 
as a precedent certainty. Youth can make no calculation 
3 



34 FAMOUS SCOTS 

of probabilities. The ratios of chance are always esteemed 
likely to favour the young gladiator. So with Smollett. 
With a light heart he went forth to the deadly battle of life, 
recking not that the Goliath of failure and disappointment 
was waiting for him almost at the parting of the ways, and 
that the only pebbles in his bag were a boyish tragedy, and 
the certificate of surgical proficiency from an obscure 
Scottish medical school. With such weapons, would he 
prove successful in the impending strife ? From this second 
point of view the aphorism is once more apposite, that the 
battle is not to the strong. 

In 1740, therefore, Tobias Smollett took farewell of his 
Dumbartonshire home, and turned his face Londonwards — 
one more tiny unit to be sucked down for a time into the 
moiling, whirling, indistinguishable crowd revolving in the 
vortex of the mighty social maelstrom. Fearlessly as 
Schiller's ' Diver ' did the youth plunge into l the howling 
Charybdis below ' ; but, alas ! the effects of the sufferings, 
both mental and physical, which he underwent ere ' he rose 
to the surface again,' were to follow hard on his footsteps, 
even to the end of life. Even as Thomas de Quincey, 
sixty years after, was to find Oxford Street a stony-hearted 
stepmother, so Smollett, alone in the mighty metropolis, 
was made to realise, with an insistence that burned itself 
into his inmost heart, that no solitary in the Sahara is more 
isolated than he who is, unknowing and unknown, an atom 
in a vast London crowd. Men in after years talked glibly 
of the irritability of the great novelist. They could not 
realise in their shallow complacency what a crucifixion 
those years of failure were to the proud, unbending spirit. 
Had Smollett been less self-confident, he would have 
suffered less. To a mind like his, it was the crushing 
consciousness of a mistaken estimate of his own powers 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 35 

that infused into his nature that strain of gall that manifests 
itself even in the brightest of his writings. 

To London therefore Smollett repaired with high hopes. 
That these were based upon his tragedy rather than on his 
medical acquirements is evident from his letters of this 
period, as well as from the preface to The Regicide, when, 
later on, it was published. Like another Scot, who nine 
years afterwards was to ' hasten ' to London with his 
tragedy of Agis % only to meet with like mortification, to 
wit, John Home, Smollett imagined he had only to present 
his play to the managers of the leading theatres to secure 
its instant acceptance. He was roughly disillusionised. 
In the first place, the merits of The Regicide are of the 
scantiest. Its boyishness and immaturity, its stiffness and 
bombast, are perceptible on every page. The characters, 
again, are perpetually firing off such exclamations and 
expletives as, ' Tremendous powers ! ' 'O fatal chance ! ' 
' Mysterious fate ! ' ' Infernal homicide ! ' and the like, scarce 
a speech being ungarnished by one of them. No sooner 
had Smollett arrived in London than he hastened to lay 
his tragedy before the managers of the theatres. After 
prolonged delays it was returned to him declined. Though 
his vanity was cut to the quick by this neglect of his 
genius, as he considered it, he looked so far to the main 
chance that he endeavoured to induce Lord Lyttleton to 
use his interest with Mr. Rich, Mr. Garrick, or Mr. 
Lacy, the great theatrical managers of the day. The only 
particular wherein that nobleman seems to have been 
blameworthy was that, out of excess of amiability, he did 
not care to wound the author's feelings by telling him of 
the lack of merit in his play. Smollett, however, accused 
him and the managers, along with his other patrons, of 
well-nigh all the crimes under heaven, because of their 



3 6 FAMOUS SCOTS 

failure to perceive in his tragedy beauties that had no 
place there. To resurrect the whole controversy would be 
as unprofitable as to retail one of last century's stale jokes. 
Those who desire to pursue the investigation will find the 
circumstances recounted by Smollett in his silly preface to 
The Regicide, when, some years subsequent, he published 
it by subscription — that is, after the success of Roderick 
Random had rendered him famous. He was weak enough, 
also, to endeavour to satirise the parties to his disappoint- 
ment in the novel in question. The story of Melopoyn 
and his attempt to obtain recognition of his dramatic 
genius is, mutatis mutandis, intended to represent Smollett's 
own case. 

The small store of guineas which the youth had brought 
with him from Scotland were meantime fast vanishing. 
Any remunerative employment seemed as far distant as 
ever. The prejudice in London against impecunious Scots 
was then at its height. All very well was it for such men 
as Arbuthnot, Thomson, Mallet, and Mickle to speak of 
the favour shown them in London by King, Court, and 
Government. Against these four, who were wafted into 
the haven of popularity by propitious gales almost at the 
very outset of their literary career, how many scores are 
there, little inferior to them in genius, as well as learning, 
who sank into Grub Street hacks through not having any 
patron to recommend their productions? The patronless 
man was a pariah, even as in feudal days a villein without 
a lord was ranked as a wild beast. 

Although the narrative in Roderick Random of the hero's 
treatment at the Navy Office, the examination he passed, 
the means whereby he was enabled in the end to get 
appointed as surgeon's assistant, are exaggerated, still 
there must have been a solid substratum of fact drawn 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 37 

from the author's own experience in similar circumstances. 
Regarding this period of Smollett's life the information 
is exceedingly meagre. That he went through terrible 
privations, can be guessed from the fact that he informed 
John Home he shuddered whenever he remembered 
those days. How he obtained a position on board the 
Cumberland, an eighty-gun vessel in the fleet commanded 
by Sir Challoner Ogle, there is now no means of 
ascertaining. Whether through the pressgang, like 
Roderick Random, or by some other channel more legiti- 
mate and honourable, is unknown. Mr. David Hannay, in 
his admirable and valuable life of Smollett, states that 
there is no certainty which of the sixteen ships in Ogle's 
fleet he served on. Dr. Anderson, in his life of the 
novelist, relates that Smollett left his name carved on the 
timbers of the Cumberland. But an examination of her 
books reveals no such name as Smollett, though a Smalley 
does occur, and the shadow of a probability is thereby 
raised that a mistake in names may have been made. 

Be this as it may, one fact is certain, — Smollett was 
present at the expedition to Carthagena, whatever might 
be the ship in which he sailed, and whatsoever the capacity 
wherein he served. On this point Carlyle's statements in 
Frederick the Great (to be cited further on), though pro- 
nounced by some critics only another example of Carlylean 
exaggeration, are by no means wide of the mark. The 
expedition to Carthagena was one of the most gigantic 
crimes ever perpetrated by a Government, while its mis- 
management is an ineffaceable blot on the British army 
and navy. Spain had looked with a jealous eye upon the 
progress of the British American colonies. All that lay in 
her power she did to harass them. British commerce was 
suffering, but the Ministry of Sir Robert Walpole seemed 



38 FAMOUS SCOTS 

utterly indifferent to the prestige of the national arms, or 
even to the safety of the colonial possessions. As Smollett 
long years afterwards stated in his History of England^ 
' no effectual attempt had been made to annoy the enemy. 
Expensive squadrons had been equipped, had made ex- 
cursions, and had returned without striking a blow. 
Admiral Vernon had written from the West Indies to his 
private friends that he was neglected and in danger of 
being sacrificed. Notwithstanding the numerous navy of 
Great Britain, Spanish privateers made prizes of the British 
merchant ships with impunity.' A complete paralysis 
seemed to have fallen on the national energies, consequent 
on the laissez-faire policy.of the peace-loving Whig Premier, 
Sir Robert Walpole. At last the exasperation of the nation, 
with the disgraces that had fallen upon it, both in Europe 
and South America, burst all bounds, and swept Minister and 
Government along with the popular enthusiasm. 

As Jamaica had long been threatened by certain Spanish 
ships of war with land forces on board, Sir Challoner Ogle 
was ordered to proceed with his vessels thither to effect a 
junction with Admiral Vernon. Accordingly, the fleet, of 
which the Cumberland was one, set sail in November, and 
reached Jamaica on the 9th January 1741. Vernon now 
found himself at the head of the most formidable naval 
force that had ever visited those seas, while the land forces 
were also strong in proportion. Had this armament been 
ready to act under the command of wise and experienced 
commanders, united in counsels and steadily attached to the 
honour and interests of their country, the whole of Spain's 
possessions in the Western Hemisphere would now have 
belonged to Britain. But, owing to the death of Lord 
Cathcart, the general in command of the land forces, the 
command devolved on General Wentworth, a man utterly 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 39 

unfit for the position. Admiral Vernon (also a nincompoop) 
and he spent their time and energies in counteracting each 
other's influence, and actually taking steps to frustrate each 
other's plans. Finding that the Spanish admiral, De 
Torres, had retired from Jamaica, in place of following 
him to Havannah, Vernon decided to attack Carthagena, 
and sailed thither, despite Wentworth's remonstrances. 
This was blunder No. 1. The second was in attempting 
to prosecute the enterprise in the face of such divided 
counsels. The consequence was a terrible loss of life by 
disease and the risks of war, because neither commander 
seemed to care how many were killed, provided they were 
not his own men. Therefore neither supported the other. 
The horrors of that expedition are past belief. Smollett's 
grim and ghastly picture of them, in his ' Account of the 
Expedition against Carthagena,' in the Compendium of 
Voyages and Travels, and in Roderick Random, is not over- 
coloured. We shall note it in its place, but meantime 
let us see what Carlyle has now to say to the case. In 
chapter xii. of Frederick the Great, under the heading 
1 Sorrows of Britannic Majesty,' he writes of the Carthagena 
expedition : ' Most obscure among the other items in that 
Armada of Sir Challoner's just taking leave of England ; 
most obscure of the items then, but now most noticeable 
or almost alone noticeable, is a young surgeon's mate — one 
Tobias Smollett, looking over the waters there and the 
fading coasts, not without thoughts. A proud, soft-hearted, 
though somewhat stern-visaged, caustic, and indignant 
young gentleman; apt to be caustic in speech, having 
sorrows of his own under lock and key, on this and 
subsequent occasions. Excellent Tobias, he has, little as 
he hopes it, something considerable by way of mission in 
this expedition and in this universe generally. Mission to 



4 o FAMOUS SCOTS 

take portraiture of English seamen, with the due grimness, 
due fidelity, and convey the same to remote generations 
before it vanish. Courage, my brave young Tobias, through 
endless sorrows, contradictions, toils, and confusions. You 
will do your errand in some measure, and that will be 
something.' 

To describe in detail the hideous drama of mis- 
management and sacrifice of valuable lives that ensued 
in consequence of Wentworth's incapacity, and of the 
strained relations between him and Admiral Vernon, would 
be out of place here. Suffice it to say that, though British 
valour, in spite of adverse circumstances, gained one or 
two successes, the expedition as a whole was a ghastly 
failure. Let us instead exhibit the awful picture Smollett 
afterwards drew of the condition of things immediately 
prior to the breaking up of the siege — a picture that thrilled 
England with horror, and led eventually, along with one or 
two other contributory circumstances, to the complete 
reorganisation of the naval service of the country. In 
addition, it blasted for ever, and deservedly so, the careers 
of monsters so inhuman as Wentworth and Vernon. 'As 
for the sick and wounded,' says Smollett, ' they were next 
day sent on board of the transports and vessels called 
hospital ships, where they languished in want of every 
necessary comfort and accommodation. They were destitute 
of surgeons, nurses, cooks, and proper provision; they 
were pent up between decks in small vessels, where they 
had not room to sit upright ; they wallowed in filth ; 
myriads of maggots were hatched in the putrefaction of 
their sores, which had no other dressing than that of being 
washed by themselves with their own allowance of brandy ; 
and nothing was heard but groans, lamentations, and the 
language of despair, invoking death to deliver them from 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 41 

their miseries. What served to encourage this despondence 
was the prospect of those poor wretches who had the 
strength and opportunity to look about them. For there 
they beheld the naked bodies of their fellow-soldiers and 
comrades floating up and down the harbour, affording prey 
to the carrion crows and sharks, which tore them in pieces 
without interruption, and contributing by their stench to 
the mortality that prevailed. The picture cannot fail to 
be shocking to the humane reader, especially while he is 
informed that while these miserable objects cried in vain 
for assistance, and actually perished for want of proper 
attendance, every ship of war in the fleet could have spared 
a couple of surgeons for their relief; and many young 
gentlemen of that profession solicited their captains in vain 
for leave to go and administer help to the sick and 
wounded ; but the discord between the chiefs was inflamed 
to such a degree of diabolical rancour, that the one chose 
rather to see his men perish than ask help of the other, who 
disdained to offer his assistance unasked, though it might 
have saved the lives of his fellow-subjects.' 

Such, then, was the frightful fiasco of the Carthagena 
expedition, in which the young Tobias served, and, by his 
serving as a humble surgeon's mate, was able to render a 
service to his country, the beneficial effects of which are 
felt to this day. Not only did he expose the awful 
consequences of personal animosity between the leaders 
of a great naval-military expedition. Great as was that 
service, the second was greater still. David Hannay 
felicitously remarks : ' It was Smollett's good fortune that 
he saw the navy at the very lowest ebb it has reached 
since there was a navy in England. In 1740 it was as 
little organised as it had been in the seventeenth century. 
There was more flogging and more callous cruelty in 



42 FAMOUS SCOTS 

every way than there had been a century earlier.' A truer 
statement of fact could scarcely be made. The navy at 
that period was suffering in common with the army from 
the disastrous effects of the Whig Walpole's peace-at-any- 
price policy. In fact, there was no proper Admiralty 
supervision by permanent officials. Everything was at the 
mercy of party scheming and intrigue. Incompetency 
ruled in all departments. Not until the accession of the 
elder Pitt was there a change for the better. British 
prestige was dragged through the mire of disgrace in every 
corner of the world, and the affairs of the navy were simply 
left to direct themselves, while the individuals nominally in 
charge squabbled and plotted for place and power. 

It was by his immortal pictures in Roderick Random and 
Peregrine Pickle of the horrors of navy service, and of the 
ignorance and brutality characterising the men who were 
proudly termed 'the tars of Old England,' that Smollett 
really revolutionised the navy. Slow though the improve- 
ments might be in filtering through the various strata of the 
service, from Admiralty to seamen, the first note of reform 
was struck when Smollett penned that awfully realistic 
picture of life on board the Thunder man-of-war, with the 
characters of Captain Oakum, Surgeon MacShane, and the 
others connected with that floating hell. In our concluding 
chapters we shall examine the truthfulness or otherwise of 
Smollett's character-painting. Here, however, it may be 
remarked that the description of the facts, as well as the 
local ' atmosphere,' have been reported by those present at 
the attack on Carthagena, and serving in the navy at the 
time, to be absolutely correct. 

After the failure of the expedition, the shattered and 
disgraced fleet betook itself to Jamaica to refit. While 
here, Smollett decided that he had seen enough of navy 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 43 

life, and that henceforth his labours would lie ashore. 
The beauty of the island tempted him to settle there. 
Accordingly, he retired from the service after fifteen months' 
experience of it, and started practice as a doctor in the 
island. What his success was cannot now be ascertained. 
In less than two years he is found in London, namely, in 
the beginning of 1744, striving once more to gain a living 
in the great metropolis. 

Only one influence followed him into life from the sunny 
island of Jamaica. He there wooed and won Miss Anne 
or Nancy Lascelles, a young Kingston heiress. When he 
returned to London, he returned as an engaged man. In 
one of his unpublished letters, he expressly states that he 
was not married until 1747, when Miss Lascelles came to 
England. But, on the other hand, there is evidence in 
Jamaica that some sort of ceremony was performed 
before Smollett left the island in the end of 1743. 
However this may be, Smollett's Wanderjahre or years of 
wandering were now over. He settled down straightway 
to do the work Heaven laid to his hand, with all the energy 
that in him lay. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE WEARY TRAGEDY — SHIFTS TO LIVE 

No sooner had Smollett returned to London than he re- 
sumed negotiations with reference to his ill-fated tragedy. 
Authors are proverbially blind to the true merits of their 
literary progeny. As each fond father's geese are swans, 
so, in the youthful Tobias Smollett's eyes, fresh from con- 
quest in the matrimonial arena, this decided objection to 
have anything to do with his play could only result from 
national antipathy against the Scots. ' My luckless tragedy 
is suffering for Bannockburn,' he remarked on one occasion 
to Mallet. Our vanity will seize on any reason rather than 
the right one to save our amour-propre. Undoubtedly, 
Rich, Gifford, and Lacy's treatment of Smollett was far 
from generous, nor was Garrick wholly free from blame. 
They should have declined the play at once. Let us take 
the better view of it, however, and ascribe their action to 
a mistaken desire to save the peppery Scotsman's feelings. 
Better a hundred times if he had received the plain, un- 
varnished truth about that wretchedly crude production at 
the outset. A few pangs of wounded vanity, a curse or two 
at the Southron's lack of critical insight, and Tobias pro- 
bably would have buried or burned his MS. and forgotten 
all about it in another year, while in the long-run his 
common sense would have come to see the justice of the 
managerial decision. But for several years after his return 

44 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 45 

from Jamaica his expectations were raised and his hopes 
excited by vague promises and vaguer hints as to what * we 
will do next year.' The consequence of all this man- 
oeuvring was, that Tobias, with that obstinate national pride 
characteristic of him, conceived that in some occult way 
patriotic prestige was bound up in his publishing, by hook 
or crook, a production so long withheld from a presumably 
expectant public by Southron jealousy. More follies have 
been perpetrated under the guise of patriotism than through 
all the vices combined. Let us detail the finish of a foolish 
business. After Roderick Random had rendered him 
famous, Smollett, imagining that all he wrote or had ever 
written would be eagerly devoured by an undiscriminating 
public, published The Regicide by subscription. Ten years 
afterwards he cursed his indiscretion in no measured terms. 
The wisdom of thirty became the folly of forty ; and some 
time during the last two years of his life, according to 
tradition, he committed to the flames two or three dozen 
copies of the ill-digested tragedy that had entailed on him 
so much trouble and brought him so little reputation. 

Meantime, the worthy Tobias was oppressed with the 
all-absorbing problem wherewithal to live. Rumour credited 
him with marrying an heiress. Rumour, as usual, lied. 
If our ex-surgeon's mate, whose philosophy of life at that 
period seemed summed up in Horace's famous injunction, 
'Get money, honestly if you can, but without fail get 
money,' expected that in marrying Miss Nancy Lascelles 
he was purchasing the fee-simple of future years of affluence 
and ease, never man was more deceived. Let us credit 
the estimable Tobias, however, with a moral code more 
elevated than that. Albeit in the years to come Miss 
Nancy found she had not married' a blood-relation of the 
patient Job's, and he, that passionate West Indian 'heiresses' 



46 FAMOUS SCOTS 

are not the ideal wives for hard-working literary men, on 
the whole the marriage was as happy as are three out of 
every five contracted in this working-day world. But the 
fortune of Miss Nancy, being invested in sugar plantations 
and such accessories as are necessary for the efficient pro- 
duction of this necessary staple of food, was, alas ! difficult 
of realisation, and in the end only rolled upon the already 
heavily-burdened husband a quiverful of law-suits. It was 
the old story ! The lawyers got the cash, the litigants 
— the unspeakable pleasure of paying for their law with the 
object of their law-suit. Thus did Miss Nancy's fortune 
disappear ! 

From March 1744, when he returned to London, until 
January 1748, when Roderick Random was published, 
Smollett's movements are involved in obscurity. Only by 
means of meagre references in his own letters, and chance 
allusions to him in those of such friends as, in days to come, 
having carved their names in the Temple of Fame, had, in 
consequence, the somewhat doubtful honour of having their 
lives written, are we able to glean aught about his existence 
at this period. He was only a lad of some three or four- 
and-twenty years, unknown, friendless, and left to fight the 
great battle of life for himself. Little wonder is it, then, 
if, among the half-million inhabitants constituting the popu- 
lation of the British metropolis about the middle of the 
eighteenth century, the young Scots surgeon felt himself 
lost — as though he had been cut off from every kindly face 
and sympathetic voice. He probably was beginning to 
form those connections with booksellers which led him, 
before many years were over, to degenerate into a mere 
money-grubbing hack, not above doing a little literary 
' sweating,' by obtaining high prices for work which he got 
executed by his slaves of the quill on terms much lower, 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 47 

But of that in its place. Certain it is that during these 
four years Smollett must have derived an income, and, what 
is more, a moderately good income, from some source. 
His letters prove that. From one addressed to his early 
friend, Richard Barclay, and dated London, May 22, 
1744, we quote the following autobiographical facts: — 'I 
am this minute happy in yours, which affords me all the 
satisfaction of hearing from you, without the anxiety natur- 
ally flowing from its melancholy occasion, for I was in- 
formed of the decease of our late friend by a letter from 
Mr. Gordon, dated the day after his death. All those (as 
well as you, my dear Barclay) who knew the intimacy 
between us must imagine that no stroke of fate could make 
a deeper impression on my soul than that which severs me 
for ever from one I so entirely loved, from one who merited 
universal esteem, and who, had he not been cut off in the 
very blossom of his being, would have been an ornament 
to society, the pride and joy of his parents, and a most 
inestimable jewel to such as were attached to him as we 
were by the sacred ties of love and friendship. . . . My 
weeping muse would fain pay a tribute to his manes, and 
were I vain enough to think my verse would last, I would 
perpetuate his friendship and his virtue. I wish I was near 
you, that I might pour forth my heart before you, and make 
you judge of its dictates and the several steps I have lately 
taken, in which case I am confident you and all honest 
men would acquit my principles, however my prudentials 
might be condemned. However, I have moved into the 
house where the late John Douglas, surgeon, died, and 
you may henceforth direct for Mr. Smollett, surgeon, in 
Downing Street, West. . . . Your own, 

Ts. Smollett. 
N,B. — Willie Wood, who is just now drinking a glass 



48 FAMOUS SCOTS 

with me, offers you his good wishes, and desires you to 
present his compliments to Miss Betty Bogle. — T. S.' 

Now, the extracts given above would seem to indicate 
that Smollett was, in the first place, in somewhat easy 
circumstances. As Mr. Hannay very justly remarks, houses 
in Downing Street, West, and glasses of wine for friends, 
were not to be enjoyed, even in the patriarchal times of last 
century, without a periodical production of the almighty 
dollar. Circumstances point to the fact that Smollett took 
the deceased surgeon's house with the possible hope of 
dropping into his practice. But in addition to that very 
problematic source of income, there must have been some 
other, and that in some degree at least to be relied upon. 
Smollett would never have faced the future so gaily with 
such a millstone round his neck, unless he had clearly seen 
his way to a sure and steady means of revenue. To our 
mind, that revenue must either have been yielded by Mrs. 
Smollett's property in Kingston, and the ceremony per- 
formed there, prior to Smollett's departure, must have been 
regarded as a marriage, or his industry in hack work for 
the booksellers must have been phenomenal. Either alter- 
native presents difficulties. Neither can be accepted with- 
out weighty reservations. Best, under all aspects of the 
case, is it to affirm nothing positively, in the absence at the 
present time of definite information, which, however, may 
yet be discovered. 

The years 1745 and 1746 were stirring years in Britain. 
The rumours of a great Jacobite invasion of Scotland were 
rife while the year was young. They increased in number 
and definiteness as it gradually grew older, until, in August 
1745, the intelligence reached London that Prince Charles 
Edward had actually landed in the Western Highlands. 
Smollett, though a sentimental Whig and an actual Tory, 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 49 

though, in other words, sympathising with the cause of the 
downtrodden and the laborious poor, while at the same 
time he heartily anathematised Walpole and the Duke of 
Newcastle, and at this time at least extolled the Tory Pitt 
the elder, was no Jacobite. True it was, his peppery nature 
was easily aroused by the flagrant and criminal neglect 
Scotland had received under Walpole's administration. He 
was never done denouncing this ' direct descendant of the 
impenitent thief — a phrase afterwards borrowed, with a 
slight alteration, but without acknowledgment, by Dan 
O'Connell, and applied, as everybody knows, to Benjamin 
Disraeli. But however deeply Smollett was attached to his 
country, it was merely a sentimental attachment, akin to his 
Whiggery. He would not endanger his neck by 'going 
out ' during the Rebellion of the '45, but he would have 
been guilty of a little harmless treason had he met with any 
kindred spirit with an enthusiasm strong enough to blow 
his own into flame. An evidence of the interest Smollett 
took in the Rebellion, and the indignation he felt over the 
atrocities perpetrated by the Duke of Cumberland on the 
hapless Highland prisoners that fell into his hands after the 
battle of Culloden, is found in the following anecdote related 
by Sir Walter Scott, on the authority of Robert Graham, Esq., 
of Gartmore, a particular friend and trustee of Smollett : — 
1 Some gentlemen, having met in a tavern, were amusing 
themselves before supper with a game at cards, while 
Smollett, not choosing to play, sat down to write. One of 
the company, who also was nominated one of his trustees 
(Gartmore himself), observing his earnestness, and suppos- 
ing he was writing verses, asked him if it were not so. He 
accordingly read them the first sketch of his "Tears of 
Scotland," consisting only of six stanzas, and on their 
remarking that the termination of the poem, being too 
4 



5 o FAMOUS SCOTS 

strongly expressed, might give offence to persons whose 
political opinions were different, he sat down without reply, 
and with an air of great indignation subjoined the con- 
cluding stanza : — 

" While the warm blood bedews my veins, 
And unimpaired remembrance reigns, 
Resentment of my country's fate 
Within my filial breast shall beat. 
Yes, spite of thine insulting foe, 
My sympathising verse shall flow. 
Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn 
Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn ! " ' 

To which Scott adds : ' To estimate the generous emotions 
with which Smollett was actuated on this occasion, it must 
be remarked that his patriotism was independent of party 
feeling, as he had been bred up in Whig principles, which 
were those of his family. Although these appear from his 
historical works to have been in some degree modified, yet 
the author continued attached to the principles of the 
Revolution.' 

The 'Tears of Scotland,' the poem written under the 
curious circumstances recounted above, was a generous 
outburst of patriotic indignation in favour of Scotland and 
the Scots, at a time when such manifestations, owing to the 
Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, were liable to be construed, by 
a Government as truculent and short-sighted as it was venal 
and corrupt, into treason. Notwithstanding the fact that 
the 'Tears of Scotland' was moderately popular in its 
day, the powers that were in those days decided to leave 
the peppery Scot severely alone. 

At this period it is also that we obtain a pleasant 
side-light thrown upon Smollett's life and work from the 
autobiography of Dr. 'Jupiter' Carlyle, the minister of 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 51 

Inveresk, in Midlothian, from 1748 to 1805, who was the 
friend and associate of nearly all the literary celebrities 
of the period — Home, Robertson, Blair, Logan, Henry 
Mackenzie, Lords Kames and Monboddo, etc. Fortun- 
ately, he preserved and noted down his impressions of all 
these great men, though, having done so only in extreme old 
age, many of the details are incorrectly stated. Dr. Car- 
lyle remarks that with Smollett and one or two more he 
1 resorted to a small tavern in the corner of Cockspur Street 
at the Golden Ball, where we had a frugal supper and a 
little punch, as the finances of none of the company were 
in very good order. But we had rich enough conversation 
on literary subjects, which was enlivened by Smollett's 
agreeable stories, which he told with a peculiar grace. 
Soon after our acquaintance, Smollett showed me his 
tragedy of "James I. of Scotland," x which he never could 
bring on the stage. For this the managers could not be 
blamed, though it soured him against them, and he 
appealed to the public by printing it; but the public 
seemed to take part with the managers.' 

The following incident, detailed by Dr. Carlyle, also 
manifests Smollett in the light of a Scots patriot : — ' I was 
in the coffee-house with Smollett when the news of the 
battle of Culloden arrived, and when London all over was 
in an uproar of joy. It was then that Jack Stewart, the 
son of the Provost, behaved in the manner I before men- 
tioned. 2 About nine o'clock I wished to go home to 
Lyon's in New Bond Street, as I had promised to sup with 
him that night, it being the anniversary of his marriage- 

1 This was The Regicide. It was originally named 'James I.,' but 
afterwards changed. 

2 Provost Stewart of Edinburgh was a warm Jacobite, and was sus- 
pected of assisting the Prince to capture the town. 



52 FAMOUS SCOTS 

night, or the birthday of one of his children. I asked 
Smollett if he was ready to go, as he lived at Mayfair ; he 
said he was, and would conduct me. The mob were so 
riotous and the squibs so numerous and incessant, that 
we were glad to go into a narrow entry to put our wigs in 
our pockets, and to take our swords from our belts, and 
to walk with them in our hands, as everybody then wore 
swords ; and after cautioning me against speaking a word, 
lest the mob should discover my country and become 
insolent, " for John Bull," said he, " is as haughty and valiant 
to-night as he was abject and cowardly on the Black 
Wednesday when the Highlanders were at Derby." After 
we got to the head of the Haymarket through incessant 
fire, the doctor led me by narrow lanes, where we met 
nobody but a few boys at a pitiful bonfire, who very civilly 
asked us for sixpence, which I gave them. I saw not 
Smollett again for some time after, when he showed Smith 
and me the MS. of his " Tears of Scotland," which was 
published not long after, and had such a run of approba- 
tion. Smollett, though a Tory, was not a Jacobite, but he 
had the feelings of a Scotch gentleman on the reported 
cruelties that were said to be exercised after the battle of 
Culloden.' 

Sir Walter Scott, with his wonted charity, endeavours to 
account for Smollett's lack of success as a physician. He 
did not succeed, because his haughty and independent 
spirit neglected the bypaths which lead to fame in that 
profession. Another writer ascribes it to his lack of con- 
sideration for his female patients, certainly not from want 
of address or figure, but from a hasty impatience in listen- 
ing to petty complaints. Perhaps, finally, remarks Scott, 
Dr. Smollett was too soon discouraged, and abandoned pre- 
maturely a profession in which success is proverbially slow. 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 53 

In these circumstances, conscious as he must have been 
of his own powers, Smollett could only look to his pen for 
the supply of his daily needs. And it did not disappoint 
him. In 1748, besides numerous ephemeral compilations 
for the booksellers, he produced his poetical satire Advice, 
a poem in the manner of Juvenal, wherein several of the 
leading political characters of the day were held up to 
scorn. Our author certainly did not spare his caustic 
sarcasm. The consequence was, Advice became so popular 
that he published a sequel, or rather continuation of it, in 
1747, under the title of Reproof, both being bound and 
published together in the succeeding year. When another 
edition of each was called for, Smollett had made himself 
talked about and feared, in the hope that the Ministry 
of the day would see it to their advantage to pension 
him off with a sinecure office. No such fortune be- 
fell him. He had only sown dragon's teeth, from which 
enemies sprang up to harass and vex him even to the end 
of his days. 

Of the literary merits of the Satires more will be said 
anon. One quality in them may be noted here, however, 
and that was the absolute fearlessness wherewith Smollet 
attacked those in power. His sting was never sheathed 
out of dread of any man. None were exempt from the 
lash of his sarcasm, whose wrong -doings came to his 
knowledge. If the innocent sometimes were involved with 
the guilty in common condemnation, in most cases the 
reason was because they continued in association with the 
politically or morally depraved after being cognisant of 
their character. 

The sensation created by these trenchant Satires was 
great. Literary London recognised that a new writer of 
great and varied powers had risen. The old generation 



54 FAMOUS SCOTS 

was dying out. Swift, Bolingbroke, Congreve, Arbuthnot, 
Pope, were either dead or had ceased to write. Gold- 
smith had not yet appeared. Johnson alone held the field ; 
but he was more of a moral censor than a satirist. There 
was really no satirist of surpassing ability tickling the palate 
of the public, which dearly loves censure — when directed 
against other people. The coarse, sledge-hammer carica- 
ture of Tom D'Urfey and Tom Brown, though still relished 
by a few, was gradually giving place to a more refined 
and incisive, but none the less vitriolic type, wherein 
Smollett was an acknowledged master. Advice and Reproof 
are readable yet for the pungency of the sarcasm, united to 
absolute truth as regards the facts adduced. One does 
not wonder at the popularity of these pieces. They are 
thoroughly ' live ' epigrammatic productions, aglow with 
human interest, and palpitating with that vigorous, honest, 
healthy indignation against wrong which awakens a 
reciprocal feeling in one's breast across the chasm of a 
hundred and fifty years. ' Dost not fear the Government, 
Smollett ' ? said a timid friend to him after their publica- 
tion. ' Fear the Government ? ' was the contemptuous reply 
of the other. ' I might if I showed I dreaded them ; but 
no man need fear a Government provided he does not 
show he fears it.' 

During the publication of the second part of his Satires, 
Smollett was joined in London by the lady who became his 
wife. In 1747 they set up house, and for some months he 
enjoyed the luxury of his own fireside. Fate was not long 
to leave him unassailed, but long enough, at least, to give 
him a taste of that hymeneal heaven which follows the 
union of two loving hearts — long enough for him to have 
experienced the sentiments that found expression in the 
one love-poem he wrote, ' Ode to Blue-Eyed Ann.' Miss 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 55 

Anne or Nancy Lascelles cannot have been the unrespon- 
sive being some of Smollett's biographers contend, in order 
to excuse their hero's ungallant conduct in later years, 
when every other sentiment was sacrificed to ambition, 
otherwise she could not have inspired feelings so passionate 
as these — 

'When rolling seasons cease to change, 
Inconstancy forget to range ; 
When lavish May no more shall bloom 
Nor gardens yield a rich perfume ; 
When Nature from her sphere shall start, 
I'll tear my Nanny from my heart.' 

Smollett seemed to have all an Irishman's love of a 
quarrel. He never appeared happier than when he was 
( slangwhanging ' some unfortunate, though it is a hundred 
to one the fault was on his own side. To be 'slangwhanged ' 
in return, however, was altogether another matter. Ridicule 
cut him to the raw. He had the idea that all the world 
should submit to his animadversions patiently and un- 
complainingly. But if any dared to retaliate, instantly 
they were dubbed rogues, and fools, and blockheads. An 
instance of this occurred in his relations with Rich, the 
theatrical manager. The success of Advice had induced 
the latter to lend a favourable ear to Smollett's proposal to 
write the libretto of an opera called Alceste, which would 
have been produced at Covent Garden, Handel being 
engaged to write the music for it. All went well, and the 
work was actually in rehearsal, when Rich made some 
suggestions to Smollett about altering one of the scenes. 
Immediately the peppery poet was on his dignity. He 
declined to alter a line. Thereupon Rich, preferring to 
quarrel with his author rather than offend the public, 
rejected the piece, to Smollett's intense chagrin. In vain 



56 FAMOUS SCOTS 

his friends begged c f him to make some concession to 
Rich, who seems to have been exceedingly forbearing all 
through. The poet declined, and thus another chance of 
bettering his prospects was lost. 

Handel, on hearing of the transaction, is reported to have 
remarked, ' That Scotchman is ein tarn fool ; I vould have 
mate his vurk immortal,' and immediately proceeded to 
alter the music so as to adapt it to Dryden's ' Ode for St. 
Cecilia's Day.' Verily Alceste would have been immortal 
if wedded to those noble harmonies. But it was not to be. 
The only result was the addition of another group of 
powerful social personages to his already long list of 
enemies, for of course Tobias could not refrain from 
lampooning Rich. ' O the pity of it ! ' 



CHAPTER V 

RODERICK RANDOM 

We reach now the most important period of Smollett's life. 
That he had fully realised, long before, the splendid nature 
of the talents wherewith he was endowed, is more than 
probable, though he possibly was in doubt as to the precise 
outlet his genius would make for itself. He had tried 
tragedy, but had been roughly disillusionised as to his El 
Dorado being found on the stage. He had neither the 
power of compression nor the faculty of seizing upon one 
central idea and making all the others subservient and 
subordinate thereto, so necessary a qualification in the 
dramatist. His satire also was a little too ferocious and 
vitriolic to entirely please the taste of the English-reading 
public, that was gradually looking askance at the knock- 
down, sledgehammer blows of Butler and Swift, and veering 
round to the more delicate but none the less effective style 
of Goldsmith, Gay, and Johnson. His poetry, moreover, 
was not sufficiently generous, either in quantity or quality, 
to secure for him even a low place in the Temple of Poesie. 
His genius, therefore, must find some other outlet. What 
was it to be ? 

In 1740, Samuel Richardson, the father of the English 
novel, had produced Pamela, a work which at once achieved 
a lasting success. Not that novel-writing was unknown 
previous to that date, as many writers suppose. The Italian 



58 FAMOUS SCOTS 

novelli and the Spanish tales were known in Britain, and 
had inspired many imitators. While carefully dissociating 
the pastoral romances like Sidney's Arcadia or those ' rom- 
ances ' proper, or fiction dealing with feudal customs and 
illustrative of the ' virtues ' of chivalry, from \ novels,' 
which, in the early signification of the word at least, implied 
stories descriptive of domestic or everyday life in the period 
of the writer's own immediate epoch, many of the stories 
written by Robert Greene, the dramatist, Thomas Nashe, 
and Nicolas Breton are novels of English life pure and 
simple, albeit foreign names may be used. So in Shake- 
speare all his plays are distinctively English in atmosphere 
and sympathies, to say nothing of sentiments, although 
Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and the 
like, are selected as the nominal heroes and heroines of the 
piece. The English novel had long been in existence. 
The only difference was that the writers did not specialise 
any period as that wherein the incidents occurred. They 
preferred to leave themselves free, and to people with the 
creatures of their fancy that] mysteriously delightful era 
vaguely shadowed forth by 'long ago' or 'once upon a 
time.' 

The surpassing virtue of Richardson and his successor 
Fielding was that they boldly seized upon the time wherein 
they lived as that which was to form the background of 
their stories. Their ' to-day ' was to be painted as faith- 
fully and as fondly as those earlier writers had depicted 
imaginary epochs. We can scarcely form any idea now of 
the overwhelming enthusiasm that greeted Richardson's 
Pamela. For the first time readers saw their own age 
delineated with a fidelity and withal a fearlessness that had 
the effect of a supreme moral lesson. Of course, to our 
ideas of to-day, many of the descriptions in the novels of last 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 59 

century are simply revolting, and would be condemned 
amongst us as an outrage on good taste. ' The morals of 
the young person ' are our nineteenth-century bogey, which 
ever and anon rises up to scare any luckless novelist who 
dares to paint life as it really is. Thackeray used to lament 
that he dared not paint Becky Sharp as she really was, 
because all the mammas in the British Islands would taboo 
his work. But midway the eighteenth century they were 
not so queasy-stomached. They called a spade a spade. If 
a man went to the devil with wine and women, they took a 
delight in chronicling the whole process — as a warning to 
others, be it noted, not like the leprous-minded, neurotic 
school in our own days, look you, because they wanted 
to rake in guineas by chronicling a brother's or a sister's 
shame. 

Pamela, however, effected a higher purpose than merely 
affording pleasure to eager readers. Its exotic morality and 
exaggerated sentimentality stirred up into vigorous life the 
spirit of ridicule latent in the big, manly, kindly, but coarse- 
fibred nature of Henry Fielding. As a caricature of Pamela 
he produced his novel, Joseph Andrews, the hero of which 
was the brother of Pamela, and was made to exhibit the 
same exaggerated virtues as had characterised the latter. 
Fielding's " skit " became the first great character-novel in 
the English language, and announced to the world the fact 
that the greatest master of contemporary literary portraiture 
that prose literature has yet seen, had appeared. 

The publication of Clarissa Harloive, by Richardson, 
towards the end of 1747, and the announcement made of 
the appearance of Fielding's Tom Jones, in parts, seem to 
have raised the question in Smollett's mind whether he also 
might not be able to create a gallery of fiction every whit as 
notable as 'Pamela,' or 'Mr. B — ■ — ,' or 'Parson Adams,' or 



60 FAMOUS SCOTS 

1 Lovelace,' or c Sophia Western.' The flattering results of 
success in the improvement of the material prospects of both 
Richardson and Fielding could not but exercise a certain 
amount of influence on him. In the month of June 1747, 
as he tells us, he began the composition of a novel of 
his own time, very diffidently, and with the resolve firmly kept 
in view, that if the work did not come up to his own ex- 
pectations, he would remorselessly burn it. 

He was of too original a caste of genius to sink into the 
subordinate position of a mere imitator of either Richardson 
or Fielding. He noted carefully that the former had mono- 
polised the novel of sentiment, as the latter had taken as 
his own the novel of character. But he also saw that the 
novel of incident was still unappropriated in English fiction. 
This department he determined to make his own. Taking 
the Gil Bias of Le Sage as his model, he endeavoured as 
far as possible to make his tale interesting by the number 
and variety of the events introduced, feeling assured that the 
portraiture of character would not be of an inferior type, if 
only he could draw on his past experiences for material. 
While by no means a slavish follower of Le Sage, the influ- 
ence of the great French writer is very perceptible in Roderick 
Random, There is the same breathless succession of in- 
cidents, the same hairbreadth escapes, the same ready 
ingenuity on the part of the hero in extricating himself from 
awkward predicaments. In a word, Roderick is but a blood 
relation of Gil Blas i though his British parentage and 
rearing have modified some of the eccentricities and 
peccadilloes that would have scared even the purblind 
mammas and custodians of national virtue last century. 

Roderick Random was published towards the end of 
January 1748, having occupied five months in its composi- 
tion. Its success was instant and extraordinary. The 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 61 

British public recognised that a third had been added to 
the great masters of fiction — a third whose genius, though 
inferior in solidity and sublimity to that of either Richardson 
or Fielding, surpassed both in prodigality and wealth of 
invention. The first edition of the work did not bear the 
author's name, but was published in two small duodecimo 
volumes by Osborn of Gray's Inn Lane (the same individual 
knocked down by Dr. Johnson as a punishment for inso- 
lence), the price being six shillings. The interest excited 
by the book may be imagined when it was attributed by 
Lady Mary Wortley Montague to Fielding. In a letter to 
her daughter, the Countess of Bute, as recorded in her works, 
Lady Mary says : ' Fielding has really a fund of true humour. 
I guessed Roderick Random to be his, though without his 
name.' Later on she adds : ' I cannot think Ferdinand 
Fathom wrote by the same hand, it is every way so much 
below it.' 

The notices of the novel in any contemporary journals 
are but meagre. In the Gentleman's Magazine and in the 
Intelligencer^ short criticisms appear noting it as a work 
'full of ingenious descriptions and lively occurrences.' 
Several of the other periodicals contented themselves with 
a mere intimation of its publication. Of puffing and pushing 
seemingly the work needed little. Its own merits carried it 
into all circles. Even Samuel Richardson, whose antipathy 
to Fielding may have inclined him to show favour to any 
possible rival of the man who had dared to caricature his 
pet creation, remarked of it in comparison with Tom Jones \ 
published some months later, that Roderick Random was 
written by a good man to show the evils of vice, Tom 
Jones by a profligate to render vice more alluring. The 
infallible judgment of posterity will not confirm the criticism 
of the narrow-minded old bookseller, who abhorred anything 



62 FAMOUS SCOTS 

that did not directly or indirectly reflect praise on himself. 
Edition after edition of this the latest success in literature 
was called for. Smollett's name was placed on the title-page 
after the issue of the second edition, and the public then 
realised that the popular novel was the work of none of the 
elder writers, as was supposed, but of a young, impecunious 
surgeon, not yet thirty, who had exhibited a very pretty 
talent for satire, as the Dukes of Newcastle and Grafton, the 
Earls of Bath, Granville, and Cholmondeley, Sir William 
Yonge, Mr. Pitt, and Rich the theatrical manager, could 
testify to their cost. 

Thereupon the town sought to take the young surgeon 
up and patronise him, only to discover that he was far from 
being a patronisable party — nay, was somewhat akin to the 
frozen snake which the countryman, pitying, took up and 
hid in his bosom to warm it, only to be stung when the 
reptile recovered vitality. Smollett all his life was too apt 
to mistake genuine kindness for patronage, and to flash out 
hasty darts of sarcasm in response to heartfelt wishes to win 
his friendship. Many of the leading personages of London 
now sought to benefit him and to show him that they desired 
to count him among their friends. But Tobias, as already 
said, was like the fretful porcupine. He had been so long a 
stranger to disinterested kindness, so long treated as little 
better than a superfluous atom on the world's surface, that 
affability towards him was construed into condescension — a 
thought which made each particular hair of his sensitive 
nature to stand on end. Curious though the fact, nevertheless 
it is true that Smollett's friendship was in most cases 
extended to those who differed from him rather than to 
those who agreed with him, though at the same time he 
might be bespattering the former with all the terms of repro- 
bation in his somewhat extensive vocabulary of vituperation. 



* 



\ 

TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 63 

Although Roderick Random, coming, as it did, sandwiched 
in, so to speak, between Clarissa Harlowe and Tom Jones, 
had to pass through a trying fire of literary comparison, it 
emerged from the ordeal more popular than ever. Readers 
realised that in him was a writer who was a story-teller pure 
and simple, whose moral lessons were conveyed rather by 
implication than by positive precept, and to whom the 
progress of his story was the prime consideration. The 
wearisome moralisings of Richardson and the tedious 
untwistings of motive so characteristic of Fielding were 
unknown in Roderick Random. The story for the story's 
sake was evidently the writer's aim throughout, and nobly 
he fulfilled it. By many of our latter-day novelists the 
imaginative swiftness of Smollett might with advantage be 
studied. 

All criticism will be reserved for our closing chapters, but 
at this point it may not be out of place to state that, although 
Smollett's characters are many of them drawn from life, it 
does not follow they are portrayed to the life. By this 
distinction I would seek to relieve him of the imputation, 
shameful in many cases beyond a doubt, of having deliberately 
drawn line for line the portraits of his relatives, of individuals 
met with on board the Cumberland, and other fellow- 
travellers with whom he had fallen in during his journey 
along the highway of existence. That suggestions were 
given to him by the actions of such men as the commander 
of the Cumberland, the staff of surgeons on board, and other 
personages with whom he came in contact, is perfectly 
probable. But that he noted through the microscope of 
his keen faculty of observation, every trait, every moral 
feature, and registered them on the debit or credit side of 
each character, I cannot admit, nor would such a course be 
consistent with the originality of his genius. The setting 



64 FAMOUS SCOTS 

of incident may in some cases be drawn from his own 
experience, but that we can in any sense rely on each 
portrait in his works being a truthful representation of the 
prototype, that I deny. The assumption is negatived by 
his own confession with regard to his grandfather, and also 
by his action with reference to Gordon, his former employer. 
If the latter were drawn to the life under the character of 
either Potion or Crab in Roderick Random^ as many 
biographers contend, Smollett completely ate his own words 
in Humphrey Clinker when he remarked that Gordon ' was 
a patriot of a truly noble spirit,' etc. There is nothing more 
misleading and at the same time more unfair to an author 
than to subject him to this sort of literary dissection. No 
author is without suggestions from without in limning his 
gallery of characters, but that he draws them wholly from 
without is as impossible as that a doctor's diagnosis is based 
solely on what he observes, or on what is visible to the eye, 
and not also on what is the result of arguing from the 
known to the unknown. Captains Oakum and Whiffle, 
Squire Gawky, and others, are intentionally exaggerated 
for the purposes of literary effect. If they were drawn from 
nature, then they would have to be severely condemned as 
exaggerations. 

Sir Walter Scott speaks very decidedly on this point in 
The Lives of the Novelists and Dramatists : ' It was gener- 
ally believed that Smollett painted some of his own early 
adventures under the veil of fiction ; but the public carried 
the spirit of applying the characters of a work of fiction to 
living personages much farther than the author intended.' 
Dr. Moore, also, while acknowledging that Smollett was not 
sufficiently careful to prevent such applications of his 
characters, yet denies that they were portraits of living 
personages. 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 65 

Smollett now could contemplate the future with hopeful- 
ness. Roderick Random had achieved a success so 
extraordinary, that even at that early period in his literary 
career, the booksellers, or, as they would now be termed, 
4 publishers,' were bespeaking his wares ahead. Taken 
all in all, Smollett accepted his good fortune with conspicu- 
ous moderation. Success did not turn his head. He was 
not like his characters, Roderick Random or Peregrine 
Pickle, extravagantly uplifted by prosperity, plunged into 
despair by adversity. More akin to worthy old Matthew 
Bramble was he, who, while he took the world at no very 
high valuation, and was not averse to accepting its smile, 
yet did not break his heart over its frown. 

The only foolish action to which he gave way at this 
period of popularity was the publication by subscription of 
The Regicide. The fame accruing to him from the success 
of his novel was, he reasoned, a favourable means whereby 
to enable him to launch his play upon the waters of public 
opinion. His reputation certainly ensured the sale of 
his play, but the sale of his play materially affected his 
reputation. That The Regicide was not a work of merit 
Smollett never could be brought to see, until he had 
criticised for some years the works of others in the Critical 
Review. Besides, he had sufficient of the old Adam in him 
that he wished * to have his knife ' into the offending theatri- 
cal managers, and the 'great little men,' as he called them, 
who had professed to take his play under their patronage. 
Therefore, when The Regicide was published in 1749, our 
author prefixed thereto a preface full of gall and vinegar — 
a piece of spleen, of which, in his later days, he was 
sincerely ashamed. That preface is not pleasant reading 
to those who love the genius of Smollett. A vindictive 
schoolboy in the first flush of resentment against his teacher 
5 



66 FAMOUS SCOTS 

for giving him a sound but deserved birching could not 
have perpetrated anything much worse. 

In 1750, Smollett and his wife paid a visit to Paris, in 
order that the popular novelist might collect materials for 
his new work of fiction. The charms of the gay city, the 
kindness and consideration shown him by the Parisians, the 
adulation showered on him by the literary men of the 
French capital, all coloured Smollett's estimate of the place 
and people. ' To live in Paris,' he says in one of his letters 
of the period, ' is to live in heaven.' That he saw reason 
slightly to alter his opinion afterwards, was only to be 
expected. But the delights of this first visit to Paris 
remained indelibly impressed on his memory. 

He met many persons in France whose characters and 
circumstances afterwards suggested to him some of the most 
notable personages in his gallery of fiction. For example, 
Moore, in his memoirs of Smollett, states that the portrait 
of the Doctor in Peregrine Pickle was drawn in some 
respects from Dr. Akenside, the well-known poet, author of 
The Pleasures Of Imagination, a man of true learning, culture, 
and high talents, but whose offence, in Smollett's eyes, was 
that he had cast some sneering reflections upon Scotland in 
Smollett's presence, although, on the other hand, Akenside 
had studied in Edinburgh, and acknowledged the excellence 
of its medical school. Pallet the painter, also, was 
suggested to him, adds Moore, by the coxcombry of an 
English artist, who used to declaim on the subject of Virtu, 
and often used the following expressions, familiar enough to 
readers of the novel in question — ' Paris is very rich in the 
arts ; London is a Goth, and Westminster a Vandal, compared 
to Paris.' 

But the most effective episode drawn by Smollett from 
his French experiences was, as Anderson says, the story of 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 67 

the Scottish Jacobite exiles, banished from their country 
for their share in the Rebellion of 1745. Readers of 
Peregrine Pickle will remember that at Boulogne the hero 
meets a body of these unfortunates, who daily made a 
pilgrimage to the seaside to view the white cliffs of Britain, 
which they were never more to approach. That incident 
was drawn from life. Mr. Hunter of Burnside was the 
individual amongst them who is mentioned as having wept 
bitterly over his misfortune of having involved a beloved 
wife and three children in misery and distress, and in the 
impatience of his grief, having cursed his fate with frantic 
imprecations. Dr. Moore heard Mr. Hunter express him- 
self in this manner to Smollett, and at the same time relate 
the affecting visit which he and his companions daily made 
to the seaside when residing at Boulogne. From his visit, 
then, Smollett drew a wealth of incidents and characteristics, 
which he was able with surpassing skill to touch up, re- 
colour, magnify, and exaggerate as he saw fit in the interests 
of his story. 

At this period, John Home, author of Douglas, was 
paying a visit to London in order to try to induce Garrick 
to accept his tragedy of Agis. He met Smollett, introduced 
to him by their mutual friend { Jupiter ' Carlyle, and had 
much pleasant intercourse with him. From the Life 1 of 
Home by Henry Mackenzie, I extract the following details, 
as they throw a curious side-light on Smollett's character. 
In his letter, dated 6th November 1749, to Carlyle, he 
remarks : ' I have seen nobody yet but Smollett, whom I 
like very well.' Farther on he adds : 'lama good deal 
disappointed at the mien of the English, which I think but 
poor. I observed it to Smollett, after having walked at 

1 Works of John Home, now first collected, with a Life of the Author 
by Henry Mackenzie, London, Cadell, 1810, 



68 FAMOUS SCOTS 

High-Mall, who agreed with me.' Then, a little later, 
Home writes to 'Jupiter,' evidently grateful for some kind- 
nesses shown him by Tobias, in the following terms : — ' Your 
friend Smollett, who has a thousand good, nay, the best 
qualities, and whom I love much more than he thinks I do, 
has got on Sunday last three hundred pounds for his Mask. 1 
What this Mask was it is hard to say, but in all probability 
it referred to some work which Smollett was executing for 
Garrick. To the Alceste the allusion could not refer, nor to 
the Reprisals. The allusion, therefore, must be directed to 
some cobbling dramatic work, of which Smollett did a great 
deal for Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and Goodman's 
Fields. 

A testimony so independent as this from Home possesses 
the highest value. To the virtues and excellences of a 
much misunderstood man it offers a tardy but valuable 
vindication. 

Of Smollett, David Hume, who met him somewhat later 
in life, said : ' He is like the cocoa-nut, the outside is the 
worst part of him.' 



CHAPTER VI 

PEREGRINE PICKLE AND FERDINAND COUNT FATHOM — 
DOCTOR OF PHYSIC 

Both during his stay in Paris, and on his return, Smollett 
had been working steadily at his new novel, which he had 
called The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. The title of all 
his books affords a clue to their character. Incident — 
vigorous, well described incident, lively, incessant, exhaust- 
less — such was the ■ mode ' of fiction our author had 
determined to make his own. Hence the titles of his 
works — The Adventures of Roderick Random, The Adventures 
of Peregrine Pickle, The Adventures of Ferdinand Count 
Fathom, The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, The 
Expedition of Humphrey Clinker — are genuinely descriptive 
of his style of writing. He had no patience for the slow 
analysis of character, or the exhibition of wire-drawn 
sentiments. His novels were always on the boil. There 
was no cooling down of the interest permitted, even for a 
moment. No sooner was the hero done with one incident 
than another was hard on its trail to overtake him. 
Ennui and dullness have a bad time of it while one of 
Smollett's novels is in course of perusal. 

In 1750, acting upon the urgent solicitations of his wife, 
he made a last attempt to establish himself as a physician. 
Mrs. Smollett did not exactly appreciate a husband who 
had no profession. Poor Nancy does not seem to have 

69 



70 FAMOUS SCOTS 

been a very suitable yokefellow for our busy litterateur. 
She had no reverence for literature as such, or for its 
professors. She had all a woman's desire for social 
distinction. But in order to take any position in that 
society after which this poor little Eve of the eighteenth 
century panted as eagerly as those of the nineteenth, an 
indispensable desideratum was that her husband should 
belong to one of the recognised professions, even although 
it might be only ' something in the City ' ! To hope to 
settle in London was out of the question. That had 
been already tried, and had failed. Perhaps the good folks 
of the city of King Bladud might be more amenable to 
the recommendations of Dr. Smollett's skill. Therefore 
Smollett resolved to settle at Bath, and see whether he 
could gain a living as a doctor at the great eighteenth 
century Spa. 

Before this project could be put into practice, however, 
medical etiquette demanded he should take a physician's 
degree. Hitherto he only had secured a surgeon's certificate, 
and that was of little service at Bath. Accordingly, he 
proceeded to take his degree of M.D., and thereafter had 
a right to sign himself ' Dr. Smollett.' Considerable doubt 
existed formerly regarding the University whence our author 
obtained his diploma. Even so late as in Dr. Anderson's 
time ( 1 805-1 820, the dates of the editions of his book), 
the question had not been decided. The statement in his 
Life of Smollett that his diploma was probably obtained 
from some foreign University, and that 'the researches 
which have hitherto been made in the lists of graduates 
in the Scottish Universities, have not discovered his name,' 
led investigators to every other quarter but the right one. 
All the registers of the foreign medical schools were 
ransacked in vain. To Sir Walter Scott must be ascribed 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 71 

the honour of settling the matter once for all, by proving 
that Smollett was a medical graduate of Aberdeen. Let 
Sir Walter speak for himself. He says : ' The late 
ingenious artist, Mr. H. W. Williams of Edinburgh, tells 
us in his Travels ; that a friend of his had seen in 181 6, 
at Leghorn, the diploma of Smollett's doctorate, and that 
it was an Aberdeen one. The present editor thought it 
worth while to inquire into this, and Professor Cruikshank 
has politely forwarded a certificated copy of the diploma, 
which was granted by the Marischal College of Aberdeen 
in 1750.' Accordingly, therefore, for a year or two at least, 
we must picture the author of Roderick Random feeling 
the pulses and examining the tongues of patients who, 
in many cases, were mere valetudinarians, or, on the other 
hand, feigned themselves ill that they might have an excuse 
for visiting the gay city of Bath. With that irritating class 
of patients Smollett would have no patience. He would 
brusquely expose their petty deceit ; and in one case, at 
least, informed a lady that ' if she had time to play at being 
ill, he had not time to play at curing her.' Such a 
physician was like a wild buffalo let loose over the 
conventional parterres of the sentimental femininity of both 
sexes. He simply gored with his rude satire the pleasant 
fictions of lusty but lazy invalids, or scattered to the winds 
the fond delusions of hypochondriacs, in whom too much 
old port and high living had induced the demons of 
dyspepsia. Little wonder is it, then, that Smollett as a 
physician was as supreme a failure as Oliver Goldsmith. 
Within two years we find him back in London, cursing his 
folly in ever having been induced to try an experiment 
that was doomed to failure from the very outset. Alas, 
poor little Mrs. Smollett ! her dreams of social importance 
were rudely dispelled. From a brief experience of playing 



72 FAMOUS SCOTS 

* the doctor's dame' among the good folks of Bath, she had 
ignominiously to return to London and sink into the 
obscurity of a lady who cannot even aspire to the credit of 
having a husband who is 'something in the City.' In 
1 Narcissa's ' eyes — for there is little doubt that the character 
of Narcissa in Roderick Random was at least suggested by 
his wife — her husband's literary work was worse than 
degrading. In common with many others of her time, she 
deemed 'a man of letters' to be synonymous with a 
gentleman who spent one-half his time in the Fleet or the 
Marshalsea for debt, and the other half in dodging bailiffs 
from post to pillar for the privilege of enjoying God's 
sunshine without the walls of a jail. 

One piece of work Smollett accomplished before he left 
Bath. He published a short treatise on the mineral waters 
of the place under the title, An Essay on the External 

Use of Water ; in a letter to Dr. , with Particular Remarks 

on the Presetit Method of Using the Mineral Waters at 
Bath in Somersetshire, and a Plan for renderhig them 
more Safe, Agreeable, and Efficacious (4to, 1752). The 
book is full of sound maxims for the preservation of health. 
But here and there he cannot resist girding at those who 
visited the place for no other purpose than to participate 
in its gaieties, and whose ailments were as fictitious as in 
many cases was their social standing. This was, of course, 
a hit at the crowds of sharpers and adventurers of all sorts, 
male and female, that frequented Bath during its palmy 
days last century. 

While at Bath, however, that is, in March 1751, Peregrine 
Pickle, his second great novel, was published in two volumes 
duodecimo, the imprint being ' London : Printed for the 
Author, and Sold by D. Wilson, at Plato's Head, near 
Round Court in the Strand, 1751.' This implies that 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 73 

Smollett had found the method more to his advantage to 
act as his own publisher, than to submit to the extortion of 
the greedy Shylocks of the press in those days. The race 
of great publishers, taking a genuine interest in their authors 
and their work, had yet to arise — that race of which Scott's 
friend Constable was one of the earliest examples and 
the best. 

The success of the new novel was unparalleled. As 
Herbert says in his excellent prefatory Life to the Works of 
Smollett : ■ It was received with such extraordinary avidity 
that a large impression was quickly sold in England, 
another was bought up in Ireland, a translation was 
executed into the French language, and it soon made 
its appearance in a second edition with an apologetic 
Advertisement and Two Letters relating to the Memoirs of 
a Lady of Quality, sent to the editor by "a Person of 
Honour." This first edition is in our day scarce enough, 
and sufficiently coarse to fetch an enhanced price.' Edition 
followed edition of the popular work. If any doubt had 
previously existed whether Smollett was worthy to take his 
place beside Richardson and Fielding, none could be 
urged now. In all contemporary records we find the 
three bracketed together, as the great fictional trio whose 
works were at once the delight and the despair of 
imitators. 

But although his career was so successful, we must not 
run away with the idea that Smollett had no enemies — 
that, in a word, admiration had swallowed up animosity. 
Alas, no ! Human nature is human nature through all. 
Despite all the furore of enthusiasm awakened by the 
appearance of his great novel, there were not lacking 
detractors and vilifiers, who, too despicable to attack him 
openly, snapped at him from under the shield of anonymity. 



74 FAMOUS SCOTS 

That they were able to do him harm, or at least to cause 
him keen chagrin and vexation, is made manifest by the 
tone of sorrow and wounded pride wherewith he speaks in 
the preface to the second edition of Peregrine Pickle. 
In such circumstances it is always best to let the aggrieved 
party speak for himself without offering any opinion. He 
says : * At length Peregrine Pickle makes his appearance in 
a new edition, in spite of all the art and industry that were 
used to stifle him in the birth by certain booksellers and 
others, who were at uncommon pains to misrepresent the 
work and calumniate the author. The performance was 
decried as an immoral piece, and a scurrilous libel ; the 
author was charged with having defamed the characters of 
particular persons to whom he lay under considerable 
obligations ; and some formidable critics declared the 
book was void of humour, character, and sentiment. These 
charges, had they been supported by proof, would have 
certainly damned the writer and all his works ; and, even 
unsupported as they were, had an unfavourable effect with 
the public. But luckily for him his real character was not 
unknown ; and some readers were determined to judge for 
themselves, rather than trust implicitly to the allegations 
of his enemies. He has endeavoured to render the book 
less unworthy of their acceptance. Divers uninteresting 
incidents are wholly suppressed. Some humorous scenes 
he has endeavoured to heighten ; and he flatters himself he 
has expunged every adventure, phrase, and insinuation that 
could be construed by the most delicate reader into a 
trespass upon the rules of decorum. He owns with 
contrition that in one or two instances he gave way too 
much to the suggestions of personal resentment, and 
represented characters as they appeared to him at that time 
through the exaggerating medium of prejudice. However 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 75 

he may have erred in point of judgment or discretion, 
he defies the whole world to prove that he was ever guilty 
of one act of malice, ingratitude, or dishonour. This 
declaration he may be permitted to make, without incurring 
the imputation of vanity or presumption, considering the 
numerous shafts of envy, rancour, and revenge that have 
lately, both in public and private, been levelled at his 
reputation.' 

Along with the Adventures of Peregrine were bound up 
Memoirs of a Lady of Quality — a distinct story, sandwiched, 
as it were, between the two halves of the hero's life. 
Clumsy indeed is the fictional skill that permitted such an 
arrangement. The introduction of the Memoirs^ apart 
altogether from their moral quality, was a constructive 
error, inasmuch as the thread of interest of the novel is 
thereby broken. Though Smollett received a handsome sum 
(^150 one account mentions, ^300 another) for granting 
the favour of their insertion in the novel, he lived to 
regret most deeply the indiscretion. So notorious was the 
reputation of the lady, that her infamous character in some 
people's estimation condemned the book. The ' Lady of 
Quality,' as is well known, was the unhappy Lady Vane. 
Her maiden name was Frances Hawes. She was married 
when little more than a child to Lord William Hamilton, 
who died shortly afterwards ; then to Viscount Vane, who 
used her with such cruelty that she was driven to accept 
the protection of the Hon. Sewallis Shirley, son of Robert, 
first Earl of Ferrers ; then that of Lord Berkeley, Lord 
Robert Bertie, and others. Of course we have only her 
ladyship's side of the story. From other sources, however, 
information is forthcoming that she had been at least as 
much sinned against as sinning. But although the world 
may acknowledge thus much, it will never forgive a woman 



76 FAMOUS SCOTS 

the breach of her marriage vows, and Lady Vane, although 
undoubtedly the most beautiful woman of her decade, has 
passed into a byword of reproach. Dr. Johnson in the 
Vanity of Human Wishes remarks : 

'Yet Vane could tell what ills from beauty spring, 
And Sedley cursed the form that pleased a king.' 

But undoubtedly the quality which most of all recom- 
mended Peregrine Pickle to the British public was the 
marvellously true, albeit richly humorous, portraits of our 
seamen in the persons of Commodore Hawser Trunnion, 
Lieutenant Hatchway, and Boatswain Tom Pipes. It is 
questionable, however, if any of those exhibited so much 
insight into the human heart as that of Lieutenant Bowling 
in Roderick Pandom i a noble-spirited man if ever one was 
created. Smollett has since had many imitators, such as 
Captain Marryat, Mr. Clark Russell, and others, but none 
of them have excelled the inimitable wit and humour which 
invest the sayings and doings of these personages. They have 
become part and parcel of ourselves. We know them and 
love them, and they live with us, so to speak, in our daily life. 

He now took up house in Chelsea, and set himself doggedly 
and perseveringly to obtain his subsistence as a professional 
man of letters. From the Government of the day he could 
look for no favours. The unmerciful manner in which he 
had lashed the Ministry, says Chambers, precluded all 
Court patronage, even had it been the fashion of the Court 
of George II. to extend it. He depended solely on the 
booksellers for whom he wrought in the various depart- 
ments of compilations, translations, criticisms, and miscel- 
laneous essays. 

The next fruit of his genius was one which has never 
been popular, simply because it describes an utterly 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 77 

impossible and repulsive character. In 1753 appeared 
The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom. A more 
depressing and unhealthy work, despite the immense genius 
displayed in it, could scarcely be conceived. Sir Walter 
Scott's analysis of the novel is so admirable that we cannot 
do better than cite it here in place of any lengthened 
remarks of our own. ' It seems to have been written for 
the purpose of showing how far humour and genius can go 
in painting a complete picture of human depravity. . . . 
To a reader of good disposition and well-regulated mind, 
the picture of moral depravity presented in the character of 
Count Fathom is a disgusting pollution of the imagination. 
To those, on the other hand, who hesitate on the brink of 
meditated iniquity, it is not safe to detail the arts by which 
the ingenuity of villainy has triumphed in former instances ; 
and it is well known that the publication of the real account 
of uncommon crimes, although attended by the public and 
infamous punishment of the perpetrators, has often had the 
effect of stimulating others to similar actions.' 

But if the moral features of Count Fathom are thus re- 
pulsive, there can be no question of the supreme art 
wherewith the developments of such a character are both 
conceived and executed. The heartless villainy wherewith 
Fathom executes his devilish schemes are related with a 
subdued force that is unlike anything else in fiction ; while 
the scene of the ruin of the unfortunate Monimia is one of 
the most terribly dramatic passages in the English language, 
comparable only to the terrible remorse scene in Macbeth, or 
to the great last act in Webster's Duchess of Malfi. The 
horror is if anything overstrained. One recoils from it. It 
leaves an impression on the mind as though human nature 
were utterly debased and vicious, without a single redeem- 
ing trait, The novel once more achieved a great success. 



78 FAMOUS SCOTS 

Though its weak points were indicated by the critics of 
the day, their objections had no influence on the popularity 
of the book. 

The dedication of the novel can refer to no other indi- 
vidual than himself, because to no other whose friendship 
he valued would he dare use the language he employs. 
The work is inscribed to Dr. * * * and his own fail- 
ings of character are therein inscribed with rare fidelity. 
'Know, then, I can despise your pride while I honour 
your integrity, and applaud your taste while I am shocked 
at your ostentation. I have known you trifling, super- 
ficial, and obstinate in dispute; meanly jealous and 
awkwardly reserved ; rash and haughty in your resentments ; 
and coarse and lowly in your connections. I have blushed 
at the weakness of your conversation, and trembled at the 
errors of your conduct. Yet, as I own you possess certain 
good qualities which overbalance these defects and distin- 
guish you on this occasion as a person for whom I have 
the most perfect attachment and esteem, you have no cause 
to complain of the indelicacy with which your faults are 
reprehended; and as they are chiefly the excesses of a 
sanguine disposition and looseness of thought, impatient of 
caution and control, you may, thus stimulated, watch over 
your own intemperance and infirmity with redoubled 
vigilance and consideration; and for the future profit by 
the severity of my reproof.' From this, one would gather 
that Smollett was quite cognisant of his own weakness of 
temper — a weakness from which many of us suffer, but few 
of us are quite so honest as to own ! 

The publication of Count Fathom was the indirect means 
of involving Smollett in an unpleasant affair, from which 
he was not extricated without some trouble. Warmth of 
temper again ! A countryman, Peter Gordon, had got into 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 79 

difficulties and was brought to the verge of ruin, when 
Smollett came to his rescue, and, with more humanity 
than worldly wisdom, became security for him. Presently 
Gordon took sanctuary within the King's Bench Prison, 
and sent defiant and insolent messages to Smollett when 
the latter appealed to his sense of honour to repay him his 
losses. This conduct so provoked the choleric Smollett, 
that on meeting the rascal he soundly caned him. There- 
upon the latter raised an action against him in the 
Court of the King's Bench, exaggerating the assault into 
attempted murder. Gordon's counsel was a lawyer after- 
wards infamous in many senses, the Hon. Alexander Hume- 
Campbell, twin brother of Pope's Earl of Marchmont. 
He opened the case for his client with a speech full of 
disgraceful and unwarranted abuse of Smollet. The jury, 
however, acquitted the latter from any blame in the matter 
beyond common assault, probably considering in their 
hearts that Gordon only received what he richly deserved. 
But Smollett felt keenly the innuendoes cast upon his 
character by Campbell. He therefore sent to his friend 
Daniel Mackercher — already familiar to us as the Mr. 

M of Peregrine Pickle — a long letter addressed to 

Campbell, expostulating with him upon his conduct, de- 
manding an apology, and in the event of it not being 
forthcoming, threatening a challenge. The whole action 
was foolish. Probably Mackercher acted as a wise friend 
in the matter, by advising him not to send the epistle. At 
any rate, we hear no more of the matter, and Smollett 
had relieved his feelings by abusing his enemy — behind his 
back. Long years afterwards, the letter appeared in the 
European Magazine. But both the principals were dead ! 



CHAPTER VII 

VISIT TO SCOTLAND — THE CRITICAL REVIEW — THE 

reprisal. i755- I 759- 

Smollett was from this time forward plunged into a sea of 
pecuniary troubles, wherein, with little mitigation, he re- 
mained as long as life lasted. The year 1754, wherein he 
had to meet the costs of the action for assault brought against 
him by Gordon, seems to have been the one wherein his 
distresses culminated. For some time he was in danger of 
arrest. He skulked about London like ' a thief at large,' ever 
afraid of feeling a hand on his shoulder, and of beholding 
a bailiff ready to conduct him to the ' sponging-house.' 
For some years his monetary difficulties, like a snowball, 
had been always increasing. In his Life of Smollett, Dr. 
Robert Chambers has drawn a painful picture of the great 
genius fretting like some noble steed condemned to pack- 
horse duty, at the unworthy tasks he was obliged to under- 
take. Yet five out of every six of his embarrassments were 
the result of his own folly and extravagance. A man has 
to cut his coat according to his cloth. Smollett would 
never consent to exercise present economy to avoid future 
embarrassment. In a letter dated 1752 he complains of 
lack of money through failure of his West India revenue. 
The income from his wife's property was now greatly 
decreased, while what remained was frittered away on 

vexatious lawsuits. ' Curse the law ! ' he cried impatiently 

80 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 81 

on one occasion, ' it has damned more honest men to life- 
long drudgery than anything else.' In another letter, in 
May 1753, addressed to his friend Dr. Macaulay, he 
acknowledges having received a previous loan of ^15, but 
begs for the favour of another ^50 to save him from 
serious difficulty. He promises payment from the proceeds 
of some work he then had in hand, probably Don Quixote. 
By a bankruptcy he had lost ^180, and was obliged to 
immediately discount a note of hand of Provost Drum- 
mond's, at a sacrifice of sixty per cent., in place of waiting 
for the due-date. In December 1754 he again laments the 
failure of remittances from Jamaica and of actual ex- 
tremities. So far down was he, that he was compelled to 
write to his brother-in-law, Mr. Telfer, begging the favour of 
a loan, which after some delay he received. All these 
accumulated distresses weighed upon his spirits. ' My life 
is sheer slavery,' he wrote to one of his friends ; ' my pen is 
at work from nine o' the clock the one morning until one or 
two the next. I might as well be in Grub Street.' Still he 
toiled on, though he realised that the work he was doing 
was far from being worthy of him. As Anderson says : ' The 
booksellers were his principal resource for employment and 
subsistence ; for them he held the pen of a ready writer in 
the walk of general literature, and towards him they were 
as liberal as the patronage of the public enabled them to 
be. They were almost his only patrons; and, indeed, 
a more generous set of men can hardly be pointed out in 
the trading world. By their liberality, wit and learning 
have perhaps received more ample and more substantial 
encouragement than from all their princely and noble 
patrons.' 

Darker and ever darker grows the picture. Whether or 
not Mrs. Smollett was a poor housewife, or whether 
6 



82 FAMOUS SCOTS 

Smollett's own extravagances were wholly to blame, certain 
it is that from the period we have now reached until his not 
unwelcome release from life came in 177 1, there was no ease 
for the toiling hand, no rest for the weary brow of the great 
novelist. His daily c darg ' had to be accomplished whether 
in sickness or in health ; his daily tale of bricks to be handed 
in, if the rod of poverty's stern task-mistress was to be 
averted from his shoulders, or the wolf of want driven from 
the door. But, alas, at what an expenditure of brain tissue 
was it achieved ! He knew he was unable to take time to 
produce his best work, and the saddening consciousness 
weighed ever more heavily upon him. In March 1755, 
accordingly, there appeared his translation of the History of 
the Renowned Do ?i Quixote ; from the Spanish of Miguel de 
Cervantes Saavedra, with some Account of the Author's 
life % illustrated with 28 new copperplates ; designed by 
Hayman and engraved by the best Artists. The volumes, 
which were in quarto, were two in number, and were issued 
by Rivington, being dedicated by permission to Don 
Ricardo Wall, Principal Secretary of State to His Most 
Catholic Majesty, who, while he was resident in London 
as Spanish Ambassador, had exhibited much interest in the 
work. Though accomplished Spanish scholars, according 
to Moore, have accused Smollett of not having had a 
sufficient knowledge of the language when he undertook 
the task, for to perform it perfectly it would be requisite 
that the translator had lived some years in Spain, that he 
had obtained not only a knowledge of the Court and of 
polite society, but an acquaintance also with the vulgar 
idioms, the proverbs in use among the populace, and the 
various customs of the country to which allusions are made ; 
still the fact remains that Smollett's translation has never 
been superseded, and that it at once threw into the shade 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 83 

the previous renderings of Motteux and Jervis. Lord 
Woodhouselee, in his Essay on the Principles of Translation, 
has endeavoured, with a strange perversity of taste, to de- 
preciate Smollett's version in favour of that of Motteux. 
But the verdict of time has proved how egregiously he was 
in the wrong. Smollett's short c Advertisement ' to the work 
manifests the principles according to which he prosecuted 
his translation. He states that his 'aim in this under- 
taking was to maintain that ludicrous solemnity and self- 
importance by which the inimitable Cervantes has dis- 
tinguished the character of Don Quixote, without raising 
him to the insipid rank of a dry philosopher or debasing 
him to the melancholy circumstances and unentertaining 
caprice of an ordinary madman ; to preserve the native 
humour of Sancho Panza from degenerating into mere 
proverbial phlegm or affected buffoonery ; that the author 
has endeavoured to retain the spirit and ideas without 
servilely adhering to the literal expressions of the original, 
from which, however, he has not so far deviated as to 
destroy that formality of idiom so peculiar to the Spaniards, 
and so essential to the character of the work.' It is not 
often that genius is brought to the service of translation. 
When it is, however, as in the case of Lord Berners' 
Froissart and Smollett's Don Quixote, the result is memor- 
able. Smollett, alas ! reaped little immediate benefit from 
its publication. The work had been contracted and paid 
for five years before ! 

No sooner did he get this portion of his stipulated labour 
off his hands, than he determined to visit his relatives in 
Scotland. His heart yearned to see his mother. Fifteen 
years had passed since the raw lad, with his tragedy in his 
pocket, had set out for London, as he fondly hoped, con- 
quering and to conquer. He now returned to his native 



84 FAMOUS SCOTS 

country the pale, weary, toil-worn man, older-looking than 
his years by at least a decade. Dr. Moore relates the 
pathetic scene of the recognition of her celebrated son by 
the aged mother, then living with her daughter, Mrs. 
Telfer, at Scotston. Let us quote Dr. Moore's words : 
1 With the connivance of Mrs. Telfer, on his arrival, he was 
introduced to his mother as a gentleman from the West 
Indies who had been intimately acquainted with her son. 
The better to support his assumed character, he endeavoured 
to preserve a very serious countenance, approaching a frown ; 
but while the old lady's eyes were riveted with a kind of 
wild and eager stare on his countenance, he could not 
refrain from smiling. She immediately sprang from her 
chair, and, throwing her arms around his neck, exclaimed, 
"Ah, my son, my son, I have found you at last." She 
afterwards told him that if he had kept his austere look, and 
continued to gloom, as she called it, he might have escaped 
detection some time longer \ " but your old roguish smile," 
added she, " betrayed you at once." ' 

Smollett returned to his native country under very 
different circumstances from those under which he left 
it. Then, his family connections were anxious to get rid of 
him, rejoiced, in fact, to see him launched upon any 
profession that would remove him from their midst. He 
left, a poor, lonely, depressed, yet at the same time high- 
spirited lad, eating his heart out owing to the necessity for 
showing respect to those who lacked the one claim to it 
acknowledged by him — intellectual eminence. Now he 
returned, the most popular, perhaps, for the time being, of 
any of the three great masters of British fiction — a ' lion,' 
with whom to hold intercourse was an honour indeed. 
That Smollett was not wholly without feelings of this nature, 
his letters evince. ' I have returned a little better than 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 85 

when I set out,' he is reported to have said to John Home 
as they walked together down the Canongate of Edinburgh. 

His reception in the Scots metropolis, from which Scotston 
is distant only some twenty-three miles, was gratifying in 
the extreme. Smollett had the advantage of seeing the 
town in all its antiquity before the migration of the better 
classes took place to George Square and to 'the New 
Town' across the Nor' Loch. In 1756 it was still the 
quaint, formal, interesting, self-assertive place it had been 
before the Union in 1707. Here is a description of it 
by Gilbert Elliot, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, 
and one of the few friends Smollett had who were 
connected with the Government. 'I love the town 
tolerably well ; there is one fine street, and the houses 
are extremely high. The gentry are a very sensible set 
of people, and some of them in their youth seem to 
have known the world; but by being too long in a 
place their notions are contracted and their faces are 
become solemn. The Faculty of Advocates is a very 
learned and a very worthy body. As for the ladies, they 
are unexceptionable, innocent, beautiful, and of an easy 
conversation. The staple vices of the place are censorious- 
ness and hypocrisy. There is here no allowance for levity, 
none for dissipation. I am not a bit surprised I do not find 
here that unconstrained noble way of thinking and talking 
which one every day meets with among young fellows of 
plentiful fortunes and good spirits, who are constantly 
moving in a more enlarged circle of company.' 

With Dr. ' Jupiter ' Carlyle of Inveresk he renewed that 
acquaintance begun some years before, when neither of them 
had attained the fame that came to them in the course of 
time. Carlyle introduced him to many of his influential 
friends, and, in consequence, Smollett's visit to Edinburgh 



86 FAMOUS SCOTS 

proved an exceedingly happy one. ■ It was also in one of 
these days that Smollett visited Scotland for the first time,' 
says Carlyle, 'after having left Glasgow immediately after 
his education was finished, and his engaging as a surgeon's 
mate on board a man-of-war, which gave him an oppor- 
tunity of witnessing the siege of Carthagena, which he has 
so minutely described in his Roderick Random. He came 
out to Musselburgh and passed a day and a night with me, 
and went to church and heard me preach. I introduced 
him to Cardonnel the Commissioner (of Customs), with 
whom he supped, and they were much pleased with each 
other. Smollett has reversed this in his Humphrey C/inker, 
where he makes the Commissioner his old acquaintance. 
He went next to Glasgow and that neighbourhood to visit 
his friends, and returned again to Edinburgh in October, 
when I had frequent meetings with him, one in particular 
in a tavern, where there supped with him and Commissioner 
Cardonnel, Mr. Hepburn of Keith, John Home, and one 
or two more . . . Cardonnel and I went with Smollett to 
Sir David Kinloch's and passed the day, when John Home 
and Logan and I conducted him to Dunbar, where we 
stayed together all night.' 

Smollett's picture of the Edinburgh of his time in Hum- 
phrey Clinker is exceedingly graphic. ' In the evening we 
arrived,' writes Melford, ' at this metropolis, of which I can 
say but very little. It is very romantic from its situation 
on the declivity of a hill, having a fortified castle at the top 
and a royal palace at the bottom. The first thing that 
strikes the nose of a stranger shall be nameless ; but what 
first strikes the eye is the unconscionable height of the 
houses, which generally rise to five, six, seven, and eight 
storeys, and in some cases, as I am assured, to twelve. 
This manner of building, attended by numberless incon- 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 87 

veniences, must have been originally owing to want of room. 
Certain it is the town seems to be full of people.' In the 
next letter Matthew Bramble adds : ' Every storey is a com- 
plete house occupied by a separate family, and the stair 
being common to them all is generally left in a very filthy 
condition ; a man must tread with great circumspection to 
get safe housed with unpolluted shoes. Nothing, however, 
can form a stronger contrast between the outside and inside 
of the door, for the good women of this metropolis are very 
nice in the ornaments and propriety of their apartments, 
as if they were resolved to transfer the imputation from the 
individual to the public. You are no stranger to their 
method of discharging all their impurities from their 
windows at a certain hour of the night, as the custom is 
in Spain, Portugal, and other parts of France and Italy; 
a practice to which I can by no means be reconciled, for, 
notwithstanding all the care that is taken by their scavengers 
to remove this nuisance every morning by break of day, 
enough still remains to offend the eyes as well as the other 
organs of those whom use has not hardened against all 
delicacy of sensation.' Nor can we omit what the in- 
imitable Winnifred Jenkins — the prototype and model of 
all future soubrettes in fiction — says on the subject : * And 
now, dere Mary, we have got to Haddingborough (Edin- 
burgh) among the Scots, who are cevel enuff for our money, 
thof I don't speak their lingo. But they should not go for 
to impose on foreigners, for the bills on their houses say 
they have different easements to let ; but behold there is 
nurra geaks in the whole kingdom, nor anything for pore 
sarvants, but a barril with a pair of tongs thrown across, 
and all the chairs in the family are emptied into this here 
barril once a day, and at ten o'clock at night the whole 
cargo is flung out of a back windore that looks into some 



88 FAMOUS SCOTS 

street or lane, and the Made cries " Gardyloo " to the 
passengers, which signerfies, " Lord have mercy upon you," 
and this is done every night in every house in Hadding- 
borough, so you may guess, Mary Jones, what a sweet 
savour comes from such a number of profuming pans. But 
they say it is wholesome ; and truly I believe it is ; for 
being in the vapours and thinking of Issabel (Jezabel) and 
Mr. Clinker, I was going into a fit of astericks when this 
fiff, saving your presence, took me by the nose so power- 
fully that I sneezed three times and found myself wonder- 
fully refreshed ; this, to be sure, is the raisin why there are 
no fits in Haddingborough.' 

From Edinburgh, Smollett, as we have seen, proceeded 
to Dumbartonshire, and then to Glasgow. His cousin was 
still laird of Bonhill, and welcomed him with much warmth 
back to the scene of his early years. In Glasgow he re- 
newed his acquaintance with Dr. Moore, who had succeeded 
him as apprentice with Mr. Gordon, and was now a physician 
of repute in the western metropolis. With the latter he 
remained two days, renewing old associations both at the 
College and elsewhere. Unfortunately, very little infor- 
mation can be gleaned regarding this visit of Smollett's to 
Glasgow. Moore dismisses it in two or three lines, and 
every succeeding biographer, Anderson, Walter Scott, 
Chambers, Herbert, and Hannay, although mayhap spin- 
ning out a few more sentences, really do not add a tittle to 
our facts. 

On returning to Edinburgh in October, he was welcomed 
by all the literati of the capital, and was specially invited to 
a meeting of the famous Select Society} first mooted by 
Allan Ramsay the painter, as Mr. John Rae tells us in his 
Life of Adam Smith ; but the fifteen original members of 
1 See Minutes Select Society ; Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 89 

which had increased well-nigh to a hundred, comprising all 
the best-known names in literature, philosophy, science, and 
the arts. There he met or saw Karnes and Monboddo 
(not yet ' paper lords ' or lords of Session), Robertson and 
Ferguson and Hume, Carlyle and John Home, Dr. Blair, 
Wilkie of the Epigoniad, Wallace the statistician, Islay 
Campbell and Thomas Miller of the Court of Session, the 
Earls of Sutherland, Hopetoun, Marchmont, Morton, Rose- 
bery, Errol, Aboyne, Cassilis, Selkirk, Glasgow, and 
Lauderdale; Lords Elibank, Gray, Garlies, Auchinleck, 
and Hailes; John Adam the architect, Dr. Cullen, John 
Coutts the banker, and many others. 1 The Society met 
every Friday evening from six to nine, at first in a room in 
the Advocates' Library, but when that became too small for 
the numbers that began to attend its meetings, in a room 
hired from the Masonic Lodge above the Laigh Council 
House; and its debates, in which the younger advocates 
and ministers, men like Wedderburn and Robertson, took 
the chief part, became speedily famous over all Scotland, as 
intellectual displays to which neither the General Assembly 
of the Kirk nor the Imperial Parliament could show 
anything to rival. 

On returning to London, Smollett at once threw himself 
into the feverish excitement and worry of a journalistic life. 
In other words, he assumed the editorship of the new 
Critical Review, representative of High Church and Tory 
principles. This periodical, with its older rival, the Monthly 
Review (started by Griffiths in 1 749 as the Whig organ), 
may be considered the prototypes of that plentiful crop 
of monthly magazines wherewith we are furnished to-day. 
The Critical Review was the property of a man named 
Hamilton, a Scotsman, whose enlightenment and liberality, 
1 See John Rae's Adam Smith, 



go FAMOUS SCOTS 

remarks Herbert, had been proved by his listening to 
Chatterton's request for a little money, by sending it to him 
and telling him he should have more if he wanted it. The 
Critical Review for its age was really a very creditable pro- 
duction, though there was little to choose between the 
rivals as to merit, for the Monthly, at the date of the 
founding of its antagonist, was edited by a young man of 
surpassing ability, who won for himself a name in English 
literature even more distinguished than Smollett's — Oliver 
Goldsmith. Thus the authors of the Vicar of Wakefield 
and of Peregrine Pickle — compositions wide as the poles 
apart in character — were thrown into rivalry with each 
other. That it was a rivalry embittered by any of the 
rancour and acrimony distinguishing Smollett's future 
journalistic relations with John Wilkes, cannot be supposed, 
inasmuch as Goldsmith contributed several articles to the 
Critical Review, and as a return compliment Smollett four, 
at least, to the Monthly. The proprietors of the opposing 
periodicals may have had their squabbles and bespattered 
each other with foul names, but the editors seem to have 
been on the most amicable of terms and to have united in 
anathematising both parties. 

Much of Smollett's time was frittered away on work for 
the Review which would have been more remuneratively 
employed in other fields. But the pot had to be kept 
boiling, and there was but little fuel in reserve where- 
with to feed the fire. He was far from making an 
ideal editor, — indeed, to tell the plain truth, he made 
an exceedingly bad one. He never kept his staff 
of contributors in hand. They were permitted to air their 
own grievances and to revenge their own quarrels in the 
Review. His criticisms, also, are very one-sided. The 
remarks on John Home's Douglas, though true so far, 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 91 

are much too sweeping in their generalisations. The play has 
many merits, but the Critical Review would fain persuade 
one it had next to none. The same remarks are true of 
Wilkie's Epigoniad, by no means a work of great genius, 
but deserving better things said of it than the Critical 
meted out. With respect to the criticism on Dr. Grainger, 
the writer simply displayed the grossest and most culpable 
ignorance and impertinence towards the productions of a 
learned and refined Englishman. In a word, the injustice, 
the intemperance of language, and the inexcusable blunders 
which characterised Smollett's occupancy of the editorial 
chair of the Critical Review, caused it to be deservedly 
reprobated by those who admired justice and fair play, 
to say nothing of cultured criticism. 

In one case, however, he was clearly in the right. A 
certain Admiral Knowles, who had so disgracefully failed 
in conducting to a successful issue the secret expedition to 
Rochelle in 1757, along with Sir John Mordaunt, wrote a 
pamphlet to justify his actions in the face of the storm 
of condemnation raised against him after a court-martial 
had acquitted Mordaunt. This pamphlet fell into Smollett's 
hands, who characterised the writer as ' an admiral without 
conduct, an engineer without knowledge, an officer with- 
out resolution, and a man without veracity.' Knowles 
entered an action against the printer, giving as his reason 
'his desire to find out the writer, in order to obtain the 
satisfaction of a gentleman, if the writer's character would 
admit of it.' On Smollett learning this, he at once came 
forward, acknowledged himself as the writer, and declared 
his willingness to meet the admiral with any weapons he 
chose. But the latter was a poltroon and a coward. He 
had obtained a judgment of the Court, and he sheltered him- 
self under it. Smollett was mulcted in ^100, and in 1759 



92 FAMOUS SCOTS 

sentenced to three months' imprisonment. Knowles seems 
to have merited Sir Walter Scott's severe terms of repro- 
bation : ' How the admiral reconciled his conduct to the 
rules usually observed by gentlemen we are not informed, 
but the proceedings seem to justify even Smollett's strength 
of expressions.' 

But we have suffered our account of his relations to the 
Critical Review to run ahead of the narrative of his life. 
For several years the works he published were mostly hack- 
compilations for the booksellers. The most notable among 
these was A Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining 
Voyages^ exhibiting a clear view of the Customs, Manners, 
Religion, Government, Commerce, and Natural History 
of most nations of the world, illustrated with a variety of 
Maps, Charts, etc., in 7 vols. 12 mo. To this day Smollett's 
collection is read with appreciation, and only two years ago 
another edition (abridged) was published of this most 
interesting and instructive work. 

Immense as was the reading and investigation required 
for such a compilation, Smollett cheerfully gave it, and 
really there are extraordinarily few errors in it notwith- 
standing the rapidity wherewith it had been produced. 
The publisher was Dodsley, and among the voyages 
recorded are those of Vasco da Gama, Pedro de Cabral, 
Magellan, Drake, Raleigh, Rowe, Monk, James, Nieuhoff, 
Wafer, Dampier, Gemelli, Rogers, Anson, etc., with the 
histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru. Also 
included therein was his own account of the expedition to 
Carthagena. 

Some time before this Smollett had inserted in the Critical 
Review the following panegyric on Garrick, evidently 
intended to compensate for his bitter reflections on him 
in Roderick Random and The Regicide, Smollett's eyes 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 93 

were being opened to the more correct estimate of his own 
powers. Accordingly he wrote : ' We often see this inimit- 
able actor labouring through five tedious acts to support a 
lifeless piece, with a mixture of pity and indignation, and 
cannot help wishing there were in his age good poets to 
write for one who so well deserves them. He has the art, 
like the Lydian king, of turning all he touches into gold, 
and can ensure applause to every fortunate bard.' Was the 
wish father to the deed ? Be this as it may, within a short 
time Garrick accepted Smollett's comedy of The Reprisal, or 
The Tars of Old England, an afterpiece in two acts. The 
year 1757-58 had been a period of national disaster. 
Smollett, indignant at the timorous policy of the Government 
of the day, wrote the comedy in question to rouse the 
warlike spirit of the nation. The prologue begins — 

' What eye will fail to glow, what eye to brighten, 
When Britain's wrath aroused begins to lighten, 
Her thunders roll — her fearless sons advance, 
And her red ensigns wave o'er the pale flowers of France ; 
Her ancient splendour England shall maintain, 
O'er distant realms extend her genial reign, 
And rise the unrivall'd empress of the main.' 

The Reprisal was performed at Drury Lane with great 
success, and Garrick's conduct on the occasion was 
generous in the extreme. It laid the foundations of a 
lifelong friendship between the two. The piece was after- 
wards published, and for some time held the stage as a 
c curtain-raiser ' or ' curtain-dropper,' but is now entirely 
forgotten. 

At this period Smollet was on terms of intimate friend- 
ship with the famous John Wilkes, who has been often 
called 'the first Radical.' With Samuel Johnson also he 
had some friendly intercourse, though they were too 



94 FAMOUS SCOTS 

alike to desire a great deal of intimate association with each 
other. Smollett, however, through his influence with 
Wilkes, was able to obtain the release of Dr. Johnson's 
black servant, Francis Barber, who had been impressed 
and put on board the Stag frigate. On the occasion 
Smollett wrote to Wilkes in the following terms : — 

'Chelsea, March 16, 1759. 
1 1 am again your petitioner in behalf of that Great Cham 
of literature, Samuel Johnson. His black servant, whose 
name is Francis Barber, has been pressed on board the 
Stag frigate, Captain Angel, and our lexicographer is in 
great distress. He says the boy is a sickly lad of a delicate 
frame, and particularly subject to a malady in the throat, 
which renders him very unfit for His Majesty's service. 
You know what manner of animosity the said Johnson has 
against you, and I daresay you desire no other opportunity 
of resenting it than that of laying him under an obligation.' 

The application was successful, and Francis Barber 
returned to the lexicographer's service. Dr. Johnson 
always spoke of Dr. Smollett thereafter with great respect : — 
1 A scholarly man, sir, although a Scot.' 



CHAPTER VIII 

HISTORY OF ENGLAND — SIR LAUNCELOT GREAVES — THE 
NORTH BRITON — HACK HISTORICAL WORK — THE 
BEGINNING OF THE END. 

Despite all his hastiness of temper and irritability, despite 
his wife's lack of management, despite, too, the fact of the 
burden of debt weighing him down, the Chelsea home 
must have been a very happy one. At this time Smollett 
had one child, a daughter, Elizabeth, to whom he was 
tenderly attached. Nothing rejoiced him more than a 
frolic with his little one. ' Many a time,' he remarks in 
one of his unpublished letters, now in the possession of Mr. 
Goring, ' do I stop my task and betake me to a game of 
romps with Betty, while my wife looks on smiling and 
longing in her heart to join in the sport : then back to the 
cursed round of duty.' 

Mrs. Smollett appears to have been of a most affectionate 
and loving disposition, though, like himself, she was affected 
with a hasty temper. Though they had many quarrels, they 
were deeply and sincerely attached to each other. 'My 
Nancy ' appears in many of his letters in conjunction with 
expressions of the tenderest and truest affection. The home 
was always bright and cheerful for the weary worker, hence, 
when absent from it, he is ever craving 'to be back to 
Nancy and little Bet' Yet these were feelings Smollett 
scrupulously concealed from his fellows, so that the world 

95 



96 FAMOUS SCOTS 

might suppose him the acidulous cynic he desired to be 
esteemed. What Smollett's reason for so acting was, is 
now hard to divine. His Matthew Bramble in Humphrey 
Clinker is the exact reproduction of his own character. 
His kindliness of nature only broke out like gleams of 
sunshine on a wintry day, while, like Jonathan Oldbuck, the 
very suggestion of gratitude seemed to irritate him. He 
was one who all his life preferred to do good by stealth. 

In 1758, Smollett published a work that had occupied 
his attention throughout the better part of eighteen months — 
The Complete History of England^ deduced from the descent of 
Julius Ccesar to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. It 
was published by Messrs. Rivington & Fletcher, in four 
vols. 4to, and embellished by engraved allegorical frontis- 
pieces, designed by Messrs. Hayman & Miller. It has 
been stated, and never contradicted, says Anderson (sub- 
stantiated also by Herbert), that the history was written in 
fourteen months, an effort to which nothing but the most 
distinguished abilities and the most vigorous application 
could have been equal. When one considers that he con- 
sulted three hundred books for information, that he had other 
literary work to prosecute in order to keep the pot boiling, 
and when one has regard also to the high literary character 
of the composition, this rapidity of production is simply 
marvellous. Of course none of the facts were new, but the 
method was novel, and the treatment fresh and brilliant. 
As Sir Walter Scott justly remarks, ' All the novelty which 
Smollett's history could present, must needs consist in the 
mode of stating facts, or in the reflections deduced from 
them.' The success which attended the publication of the 
history surpassed the expectations of even Smollett himself. 
His political standpoint had been that of a Tory and an 
upholder of the monarchy. In writing to Dr. Moore early 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 97 

in 1758, Smollett says: 'I deferred answering your kind 
letter until I should have finished my History, which is now 
completed. I was agreeably surprised to hear that my 
work had met with any approbation in Glasgow, for it is not 
at all calculated for that meridian. The last volume will, 
I doubt not, be severely censured by the West Country 
Whigs of Scotland. I desire you will divest yourself of 
prejudice before you begin to peruse it, and consider well 
the facts before you pass judgment. Whatever may be its 
defect, I profess before God I have, as far as in me lay, 
adhered to truth, without espousing any faction.' Then in 
September of the same year he again writes to Dr. Moore : 
' You will not be sorry to hear that the weekly sale of the 
History has increased to above 10,000. A French gentle- 
man of talents and erudition has undertaken to translate it 
into that language, and I have promised to supply him with 
corrections.' 

But sadder and still more sad grows the picture of 
distress. During the whole time he was writing his History he 
was pestered by duns, and could not leave his home without 
dodging bailiffs. When all was over, he found himself a 
man broken in health and spirits, and already ' earmarked ' 
for the tomb. For fourteen years he was to live and labour, 
like the brave, honest, independent spirit he was, but the 
end was only a question of time. That he realised this 
fact about this period is almost certain. Henceforth his 
diligence was redoubled. Like the stranger from another 
world in the fable, when confronted with the fact of 
inevitable death, he cried, ■ I must die, I must die ; trouble 
me not with trifles; I must die.' 

But his publication of the History was not suffered to pass 
without the formation of another party bent on injuring 
him. The extensive sale of Smollett's work alarmed the 
7 



9 8 FAMOUS SCOTS 

proprietors of Rapin's History, who caballed and en- 
couraged his political adversaries to expose what they 
termed 'the absurdities, inconsistencies, contradictions, 
and misrepresentations of the book,' most of which existed 
solely in the minds of his malignant enemies. In the Whig 
periodicals of the time Smollett is vilified and abused, 
represented as a partisan and panegyrist of the House of 
Stuart, a Papist and a prostitute. The following pamphlet, 
written, however, by a man of some learning and discern- 
ment, would have been valuable and useful had it only been 
penned with more moderation and good sense. But party 
zeal is an enemy to good sense, and the truth of this 
remark has seldom been more clearly demonstrated than in 
'A Vindication of the Revolution in 1688, and of the 
character of King William and Queen Mary, together with 
a computation of the character of King James n., as mis- 
represented by the author of the Complete History of 
England, by extracts from Dr. Smollett : to which are 
added some strictures on the said historian's account of the 
punishment of the rebels in a.d. 17 15 and 1746, and on the 
eulogium given to the History of England by the critical 
reviewers, by Thomas Comber, B.A. 8vo, 1758.' Comber 
was a clergyman, and a relative of the Duke of Leeds. He 
was, in fact, engaged by the Whig Ministry to undertake 
the duty, as none of the professed litterateurs of the day in 
the Whig ranks cared to cross swords with the Tory 
champion in his own field. The publication of his History 
did Smollett much good in the eyes of the learned and 
cultured. Henceforth to them he was no longer a mere 
1 teller of tales,' but one of the great historians of the epoch 
— an author deservedly honoured for his integrity and 
impartiality. 

In 1 76 1 the British Magazine—*, sixpenny monthly on 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 



99 



whose staff Oliver Goldsmith was one of the leading writers 
— published The Adventures of Sir Latincelot Greaves ; the 
fourth of Smollett's novels, but the one which we could 
quite well have spared, provided something in the same vein 
as Humphrey Clinker had taken its place. It was written 
hastily, and to supply the demand for copy. Scott relates 
that, while engaged on it, he was residing at Paxton in 
Berwickshire, on a visit to Mr. George Home. When post 
time drew near, he was wont to retire for half an hour or an 
hour, and then and there scribble off the necessary amount 
of matter for the press. But he never gave himself even 
the trouble to read over and correct what he had written. 
Work written under such circumstances did not deserve to 
succeed. And yet, singularly enough, in this novel are to 
be found some of Smollett's most original creations and most 
felicitously conceived situations. The design of the work 
is far from happy. Obviously suggested by his recent study 
of Don Quixote, Sir Launcelot is only a bad imitation of 
the immortal Knight of La Mancha. Of this, indeed, 
Smollett himself seems to have had a suspicion. In the 
course of the dialogue he makes Ferret express an opinion 
like that to Sir Launcelot, who sternly repudiates it. 
1 What ! you set up for a modern Don Quixote ? The 
scheme is too stale and extravagant. What was a humorous 
and well-timed satire in Spain near two hundred years ago 
will make but a sorry jest when really acted from affectation 
at this time of day in England.' The knight, eyeing the 
censor, whose character was none of the best, replied, ' I 
am neither an affected imitation of Don Quixote, nor, as 
I trust in Heaven, visited by that spirit of lunacy so 
admirably displayed in the fictitious character exhibited by 
the inimitable Cervantes. I see and distinguish objects as 
they are seen and described by other men. I quarrel with 



ioo FAMOUS SCOTS 

none but the foes of virtue and decorum, against whom 
I have declared perpetual war, and them I will everywhere 
attack as the natural enemies of mankind. I do purpose,' 
added Sir Launcelot, eyeing Ferret with a look of ineffable 
contempt, 'to act as a coadjutor to the law, and even to 
remedy evils which the law cannot reach, to detect fraud 
and treason, abase insolence, mortify pride, discourage 
slander, disgrace immodesty, stigmatise ingratitude.' 

The work was written in part during his imprisonment. 
Taking this into consideration, as well as the rapidity of 
production, the conception, amid the sordid surroundings 
of the King's Bench Prison, of such cleverly drawn 
characters as Aurelia Darnel, Captain Crowe, and his 
nephew, Tom Clarke, the attorney of the amorous heart, 
is passing wonderful. Although the least popular of his 
works, and deservedly so, the book in some parts is 
redolent of ' Flora and the country green.' 

Not a moment could his busy pen afford to rest. No 
sooner was one piece of work thrown off than another must 
be commenced. In 1761, Smollett lent his assistance to 
the furtherance of a great work. This was the publication, 
in 42 vols. 8vo, of The Modern Part of an Universal History \ 
compiled from Original, Writers. In this colossal under- 
taking we know that Smollett's share was the Histories of 
France, Italy, and Germany. Not alone these, however, 
were the fruit of his industry. Other authors failed to 
produce their quota. There was one pen that never failed. 
The willing horse had to do the work. Though this 
additional labour brought in guineas, it still further ex- 
hausted his strength, and left him little better than a 
confirmed invalid. From this drudgery he passed on to 
something else that was a little more agreeable and con- 
genial, namely, his Continuation of the History of England. 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT ior 

The first volume was published in the end of 1761, the 
second, third, and fourth in 1762, and a fifth some years 
after (1765), bringing the narrative down to that period. It 
is stated that Smollett cleared ^2000 by his History and 
the Continuation. He sold the latter to his printer at a 
price which enabled the purchaser to sell it to Mr. Baldwin 
the bookseller at a profit of ^1000. From these facts one 
can gather the extraordinary popularity of Smollett's work 
at that period. 

Henceforward the story of his life is summed up in 
little more than the dates of the publication of his books. 
Of relaxation there was no interval for him. His expenses 
of living were considerable, though he never was a man 
who loved luxury or display. But he had been hampered 
by debts, by lawsuits, to pay the costs of which he had to 
borrow money at sixty per cent. Had Smollett's feet been 
free from the outset, the ;£6oo per annum, at which he 
reckoned his income, would have more than sufficed for all 
his wants. But the interest of borrowed money is like the 
rolling snowball of which we spoke before, — unless it be 
paid regularly, it constantly adds to the bulk of the original. 
Poor Smollett ! A more pitiable picture can scarcely be 
conceived than this splendid genius yoked like a pug-mill 
horse to tasks the most ignoble, in order that he might keep 
his wife and daughter from feeling the pinch of want. A 
hero — yea, a hero indeed — one of those heroes in common- 
place things, whose virtues are every whit as praiseworthy 
in their way as though he had led England's armies to 
victory, or swept the seas of her enemies. 

In connection with Smollett's historical work, it should be 
mentioned here, that although his History has not held its 
place as a standard work, his Continuation undoubtedly has. 
To this day it is printed along with Hume's volumes, under 



io2 FAMOUS SCOTS 

the title of Hume and Smollett's History of England, and 
is justly held in esteem for its impartiality and accuracy. 
His other historical works have long since met the fate 
they deserved. They were hack-work, designed to supply 
a temporary need. When that need was met by something 
better, they were forgotten. 

We must note here, however, in disproof of that jealousy 
of contemporaries which has been laid to his charge, the 
following generous estimate of those who were his colla- 
borateurs in some respects, his rivals in others. In the 
Continuation he thus repairs the hastyjudgments of immature 
years: 'Akensideand Armstrong excelled in didactic poetry. 
Candidates for literary fame appeared even in the higher 
sphere of life, embellished by the nervous style, superior 
sense, and extensive erudition of a Coke, by the delicate 
taste, the polished muse, and tender feelings of a Lyttleton. 
There are also the learned and elegant Robertson, and, above 
all, the ingenious, penetrating, and comprehensive Hume, 
whom we rank among the first writers of the age, both as a 
historian and a philosopher. Johnson, inferior to none in 
philosophy, philology, poetry, and classical learning, stands 
foremost as an essayist, justly admired for the dignity, 
strength, and variety of his style, as well as for the agree- 
able manner in which he investigates the human heart, 
tracing every interesting emotion, and opening all the 
sources of morality ! ' And this was the man whom his 
political opponents accused of never speaking of a man 
save to depreciate him. 

We reach now a period in Smollett's career which must 
always give pain to those that are lovers of his genius. 
Hitherto, though dabbling in politics, and though editing, 
professedly on the Tory and High Church side, the Critical 
Review, his sympathies had been so predominatingly literary 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 103 

that he was able to maintain the friendliest of relations with 
prominent politicians on the Whig side, notably with John 
Wilkes. Now, in an evil hour, he was prevailed upon to 
accept a brief on the Tory side by assuming the editorship 
of the new weekly paper, The Briton^ founded for the 
express purpose of defending the Earl of Bute. That noble- 
man, who owed his advancement to the favour wherewith 
he was regarded by George 111. (recently come to the throne), 
was, on the 29th May 1762, appointed First Lord of the 
Treasury, and assumed the management of public affairs. 
Although an able, honourable, and indefatigable Minister, 
he lacked experience in the discharge of public duties. 
Besides, the nation was still strongly Whig in its political 
inclinations. For the monarch, by an arbitrary exercise of 
his prerogative, thus to override the sentiments of his people 
and to dismiss their chosen representatives, was both a 
high-handed and a foolish action. More foolish still was 
Lord Bute that he permitted himself thus to be made a 
tool to gratify the king's jealousy. The consequence 
was, that the appointment was received all over England 
with a storm of indignation, and no Ministry was ever 
more unpopular than that whereof the Earl of Bute was 
chief. 

To stem the tide of adverse criticism, and endeavour to 
win Englishmen to view more favourably the advent of 
Lord Bute to power, The Briton was started, and Smollett 
was chosen as editor, inasmuch as his was the keenest pen 
on the Tory side. On hearing of the appointment of his 
friend to the post, John Wilkes, with a generosity that was 
quite in keeping with many of the actions of that strangely 
constituted man, remarked that ' Lord Bute, after having 
distributed among his adherents all the places under 
Government, was determined to monopolise the wit also.' 



104 FAMOUS SCOTS 

A few days subsequent, the Whigs proposed that, to en- 
counter The Briton, which had gone off with a great 
flourish of trumpets, as well as with some very bitter polit- 
ical writing, Mr. Wilkes should publish a paper, to be called 
1 The Englishman.' He agreed to the proposal, except that 
he did not adopt the title recommended, but chose another, 
that of The North Briton — the first number of which 
appeared on the 5th June 1762, or exactly a week after 
The Briton. 

Wilkes exhibited great forbearance towards Smollett at 
the outset. The good-natured demagogue, it is believed, 
would have been content, like many another pair of friends, 
to fight strenuously for principles, and avoid personalities ; 
or, if that were impossible, to confine their antagonism to 
the press alone, leaving the intercourse of friendship unim- 
paired. But Smollett was not of the stuff whereof great 
journalists are made. One of the prime qualities is that 
they should belong to the genus of literary pachydermata. 
Smollett was not so. He was sensitive to a degree. He 
imagined slights and insults where none were intended. 
Within a few days, therefore, of the issue of The North 
Briton, Smollett took umbrage at something said about 
The Briton, and retorted angrily with some personalities on 
Wilkes. Even then the latter would have passed over the 
ill-natured jibes with a jest. This, however, maddened 
Smollett more than aught else. He believed Wilkes 
despised him as an assailant. From that day Smollett 
devoted himself to the most unsparing personal castigation 
of Wilkes. The demagogue replied, and presently the two 
that had been such warm friends could not find terms 
bitter enough to hurl at one another. 

But Smollett was not a match for Wilkes. The former 
was scrupulously careful in alleging nothing against his 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 105 

opponent but what he could prove. The latter fought with 
characteristic unscrupulousness. A matter of no moment 
to him was it whether a charge were true or false, provided 
it served the purpose of galling his adversary. Wilkes was 
absolutely impervious to abuse and vilification. He gloried 
in his indifference to all social restrictions and customs. 
The publication to the world of his debaucheries and lack 
of principle only extorted a horse-laugh from him. With all 
his generosity and faithful devotion to the cause of popular 
freedom, Wilkes was a man of absolutely no principle. 
He sneered at his family relations, was one of Sir Francis 
Dashwood's Medmenham ' Cistercians,' who sought to out- 
bid the ' Hellfire ' and ' Devil's Own ' Clubs in abandoned 
wickedness and impiety. And yet this was the man who 
was capable of the most splendid sacrifice in the cause of 
national liberty. His abilities would have carried him to 
fame in any career. M. Louis Blanc states that many of 
his sayings are still repeated and admired in France as are 
those of Sydney Smith among us. Mr. J. Bowles Daly 1 
relates that his wit was so constantly at his command, 
that wagers have been gained that from the time he quitted 
his house till he reached Guildhall, no one could address 
him or leave him without a smile or a hearty laugh. His 
bright conversation charmed away the prejudice of such a 
Tory as Dr. Johnson, fascinated Hannah More, and won 
over the gloomy Lord Mansfield, who said, * Mr. Wilkes is 
the pleasantest companion, the politest gentleman, and the 
best scholar I know.' 

This, then, was the man who was selected to do battle 

with Smollett and to demolish the Ministry of Lord Bute. 

Certainly the latter had given Wilkes ample handle for 

assailing him by selecting as his Chancellor of the Exchequer 

1 The Dasivn of Radicalism, 



106 FAMOUS SCOTS 

Lord Sandwich, one of the dissolute Medmenham monks, 
a man glaringly deficient in ability, and so utterly incom- 
petent in finance as to cause the wits of the time to describe 
him as 'a Chancellor of the Exchequer to whom a sum of 
five figures was an impenetrable mystery.' The first sen- 
tence of The North Briton has often been copied and 
adopted as the motto of succeeding journals : 'The liberty 
of the press is the birthright of the Briton, and is justly 
esteemed the firmest bulwark of the liberties of this 
country.' The aim of Wilkes' paper was to vilify Scot- 
land, because Lord Bute, being a Scotsman, had wormed 
himself into the favour of the king. Not a very elevated 
principle, certainly, but quite characteristic of the low 
morale of the period, when personal pique was elevated 
into the domain of principle. His abuse of Scotland was 
quite of a piece with his political profligacy on every other 
point than national liberty. * He would have sold his soul 
to the devil for ^"iooo could he have induced his Satanic 
majesty to have invested in so worthless a commodity,' 
said one of his own friends. As a specimen of the 
journalism wherewith Wilkes fought the battle of popular 
liberties, take the following paragraph, to pen which now- 
adays not the neediest penny-a-liner of gutter-journalism 
would stoop, notwithstanding the jealousy of Scotland and 
the Scots which still exists. Playing on the popular 
jealousy of Scotland, Wilkes went on to say that 'The 
river Tweed is the line of demarcation between all that 
is noble and all that is base; south of the river is all 
honour, virtue, patriotism — north of it is nothing but 
lying, malice, meanness, and slavery. Scotland is a tree- 
less, flowerless land, formed out of the refuse of the 
universe, and inhabited by the very bastards of creation ; 
where famine has fixed her chosen throne ; where a scant 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 107 

population, gaunt with hunger and hideous with dirt, spend 
their wretched days in brooding over the fallen fortunes 
of their native dynasty, and in watching with mingled envy 
and hatred the mighty nation that subdued them.' 

This was the type of writing which Smollett strove to 
meet with pithy argument and epigrammatic smartness. 
No wonder it produced little effect, and less wonder is 
there that, after fighting the battle of the Ministry for 
nearly a year, he threw the task up in disgust (12th 
February 1763). Lord Bute had not given him the sup- 
port he had a right to expect ; and the Minister's own fall 
followed hard upon the cessation of The Briton, namely, on 
the 8th April of the same year. Writing to Caleb White- 
ford, a friend, some time after, he remarked : 'The Ministry 
little deserve that any man of genius should draw his pen 
in their defence. They inherit the absurd stoicism of 
Lord Bute, who set himself up as a pillory to be pelted by 
all the blackguards of England, upon the supposition that 
they would grow tired and leave off.' 

Back once more to hack-work was our weary, brain-worn 
veteran. So pressing were his needs that he had to con- 
descend to tasks beneath them. He translated and edited 
the works of Voltaire, and compiled a publication entitled 
The Present State of all Nations, containing a geogra- 
phical, natural, commercial, and political history of all the 
countries of the known world. Fancy Smollett engaged 
on such a task ! Let us hope that only his name was 
given, not his labour. Next year we know his work 
became so great that he had to hire others to do portions 
of it for him. In a word, he became a literary 'sweater.' 

Alas ! in this same year, 1763, when his own health was 
failing so rapidly, one of the links binding him most 
strongly to earth was severed. His daughter Elizabeth, a 



108 FAMOUS SCOTS 

beautiful girl of some fifteen or sixteen years of age, and 
amiable and accomplished as well, was taken from him by 
death — the saddest of all deaths, consumption. Hence- 
forth he was to tread the Valley of the Shadow alone. 
Even more than his wife, Elizabeth had been able to 
sympathise with her father's feelings and to soothe his 
irritation. The light of his life had verily gone out ! 

But still no rest ! Sorrow, however deep, must not 
check the pen that is fighting for daily bread. 'I am 
writing with a breaking heart,' he says in one letter. ■ I 
would wish to be beside her, were the wish not cowardly 
so long as poor Nancy is unprovided for.' Brave, suffering 
heart ! The end is nearing for you, though you know it 
not. Seven more years of increasing labour, and also of 
increasing anguish and suffering, and then — ' He giveth His 
beloved sleep ! ' 



CHAPTER IX 

SMOLLETT A 'SWEATER' — TRAVELS ABROAD — THE ADVEN- 
TURES OF AN ATOM — HUMPHREY CLINKER — LAST 
DAYS. 

So deeply did grief over the death of his charming young 
daughter prey on his health and spirits, that there were for 
a time grave doubts whether his reason had not been 
slightly unsettled. Constitutionally of a nervously sensitive 
nature, excessive joy or sorrow had a thoroughly unhinging 
effect upon him. He had not the self-command requisite 
to look upon grief as one of those ills to which flesh is heir. 
In his estimation, everything affecting himself was in the 
superlative degree. Never were sorrows so overwhelming 
as his, he considered, and oftentimes he seriously mortified 
people by brusquely breaking in upon their anguish with 
the statement that they did not really know what grief 
meant in comparison with him. 

After Elizabeth's death, therefore, Smollett, entirely 
oblivious of his poor wife's mental sufferings, seems to 
have abandoned himself to an excess of grief that seriously 
accelerated the progress of the maladies by which he was 
afflicted. Though he could not afford to stop work alto- 
gether, he appears from this date to have instituted a sort of 
literary factory, where works were turned out by the score. 
Smollett's name was now so popular, that on a title-page it 

virtually meant success to the publication. He therefore 

109 



no FAMOUS SCOTS 

contracted the habit of undertaking far more work than any 
man single-handed could accomplish, but getting it executed 
at a reduced rate by those whom he retained in his employ- 
ment. He appears to have kept them in food and clothing, 
and to have been in the main exceedingly kind to many a 
struggling author, who would not otherwise have obtained 
employment; but one cannot approve of methods like 
these, which degrade the noble profession of 'man of 
letters ' into that of a literary task-master. Dr. Carlyle gives 
a description of Smollett's relations to what ' Jupiter ' called 
his ' myrmidons,' which, however, affords a somewhat one- 
sided picture of the novelist's methods, though the date is 
scarcely correct. Smollett, although he had employed 
others to do his work for him when he found it to be 
too onerous/ did not really institute his ' literary factory ' 
until well *on in the ' sixties ' of the eighteenth century, 
when his health was beginning to fail. ' Jupiter ' describes 
the 'factory' as in full swing in 1758-59. But as the 
chatty old clerical gossip wrote his Autobiography after his 
seventy-ninth year, and as many of his dates with respect to 
other matters have been proved incorrect, we may, without 
much injustice to the best of Scots unepiscopal bishops, 
ascribe to the mental feebleness of age an error which 
otherwise would affix a serious stigma on Smollett's name. 
Though every litterateur worth the name will reprobate 
such a blood-sucking method as literary ' sweating,' prose- 
cuted though it has been by men to whom we owe so much 
as Smollett and Dumas (to say nothing of at least one 
'popular' author in our own day who engages in the 
despicable practice), we would fain believe, in the former's 
case, that it resulted from failing strength, and from the 
maddening consciousness of being obliged to leave his wife, 
if he died, dependent on strangers. 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT in 

But let us to ■ Jupiter ' : 1 ' Principal Robertson had 
never met Smollett (though he had seen him at the Select 
Club), and was very desirous of his acquaintance. By this 
time the Doctor had retired to Chelsea, and came seldom 
to town. Home and I, however, found that he came once 
a week to Forrest's Coffee-house, and sometimes dined 
there; so we managed an appointment with him on his 
day, when he agreed to dine with us. He was now become 
a great man, and, being a humorist, was not to be put out 
of his way. Home and Robertson and Smith and I met 
him there, when he had several of his minions about him, 
to whom he prescribed tasks of translation, compilation, or 
abridgment, which, after he had seen, he recommended to 
the booksellers. We dined together, and Smollett was very 
brilliant. Having to stay all night, that we might spend 
the evening together, he only begged leave to withdraw for 
an hour, that he might give audience to his myrmidons. 
We insisted that if his business permitted, it should be in 
the room in which we sat. The Doctor agreed, and the 
authors were introduced, to the number of five, I think, 
most of whom were soon dismissed. He kept two, how- 
ever, to supper, whispering to us that he believed they 
would amuse us, which they certainly did, for they were 
curious characters. We passed a very pleasant and joyful 
evening. When we broke up, Robertson expressed great 
surprise at Smollett's polished and agreeable manners, and 
the great urbanity of his conversation. He had imagined 
that a man's manners must bear a likeness to his books, 
and as Smollett had described so well the characters of 
ruffians and profligates, that he must of course resemble 
them.' 

1 Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Carfy/e, Minister of 
Inveresk. 



ii2 FAMOUS SCOTS 

In addition to the pitiful lack of taste and good feeling 
in making a raree-show of wretchedness, and holding up 
the misery of the unfortunate authors to a curiosity that 
was worse than contempt, the whole incident exhibits the 
characters of Smollett, Carlyle, Robertson, and Home in an 
exceedingly unfavourable aspect — the first-named as glori- 
fying himself as the Maecenas of starving Grub Street quill- 
drivers, the others because they could entertain any other 
feeling than that of sympathy for honest talent in tatters ! 

In June 1763, Smollett's health and spirits became alike 
so unsatisfactory that his medical adviser informed Mrs. 
Smollett that change of air was the only chance for him. 
His sorrow was preying on his vitality. As that was low 
enough at any time, the prospect was grave indeed ! Alas, 
poor Nancy ! She pled with her obdurate husband for 
many a week before he consented to wind up his number- 
less projects in England and go abroad. His creditors also 
seem to have behaved with commendable consideration. 
Perhaps the fact that a small legacy of ;£ 12 00 left to Mrs. 
Smollett by one of her relatives, and which, with true 
wifelike generosity, she at once applied to the relief of her 
unfortunate husband, may have facilitated matters. That 
he left England with arrangements made whereby his 
myrmidons ' were to forward their ' copy ' to him, whither- 
soever he might be, goes without the saying. The book- 
sellers, also — Newbery, Baldwin, Dodsley, Cave (jr.), and 
others — all exhibited a willingness to assist the man who 
had done so much for them. But therein they did no more 
than their duty. 

For nearly three years Smollett and his wife remained 
abroad, travelling in France and Italy, but allocating a 
portion of every day to the discharge of those tasks which 
kept the chariot rolling. When he returned to England in 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 113 

1766, he published, as the fruit of his trip, Travels through 
France and Italy: containing Observations on Character ; 
Customs, Religion, Government, Police, Commerce, Arts, Anti- 
quities, with a Particular Descriptio?i of the Town, Territory, 
and Climate of Nice; to which is added a Register of the Weather, 
kept during a Residence of Eighteen Months there. In 2 vols. 
8vo. The book takes the form of letters written by Smollett 
to friends at home ; and in the first letter he remarks : ' In 
gratifying your curiosity I shall find some amusement to 
beguile the tedious hours, which without some employment 
would be rendered insupportable by distemper and dis- 
quiet.' The spirit wherein Smollett went on tour is per- 
ceptible in the following passage : ' I am traduced by malice, 
persecuted by faction, and overwhelmed by the sense of a 
domestic calamity which it was not in the power of fortune 
to repair.' 

Travelling and brooding do not accord well together, if 
one is to receive any pleasure from the scenes passed 
through. As Dr. Anderson charitably puts it : ' His letters 
afford a melancholy proof of the influence of bodily pain 
over the best disposition.' Letters written under such 
circumstances should never have been published. In the 
exquisite scenery through which he passed, in the objects 
of interest in the galleries and museums, he appears only to 
have discovered subjects whereupon his bitter, acidulous 
humour could expend itself. Dr. Moore well observes : 
1 Those who are disgusted with such descriptions are not 
the only people to whom Smollett gave offence : he exposed 
himself also to the reprehension of the whole class of 
connoisseurs, the real as well as the far more numerous 
body of pretenders to that science. For example, what is 
one to think of a man who likened the snow-clad glories of 
the Alps to frosted sugar ; who said of the famous Venus 
8 



ii4 FAMOUS SCOTS 

de Medicis, that has awakened the admiration of ages, " I 
cannot help thinking there is no beauty in the features of 
Venus, and that the attitude is awkward and out of char- 
acter " ; and who remarked of the Pantheon, " I was much 
disappointed at sight of the Pantheon, which, after all that 
has been said of it, looks like a huge cockpit open at the 
top"?' 

The chastisement came, but from the one man who, of 
all others, should have remained silent — a man whose 
whole life was a pitiful epitome of those faults he sought to 
reprehend in Smollett — Laurence Sterne. Jealousy, of 
course, was the motive. The author of Tristram Shandy 
could never forgive the fact that the public preferred 
Peregrine Pickle to the prurient puerilities of Uncle Toby. 
Sterne did not take into consideration, moreover, the state 
of Smollett's health, and how it would colour every estimate 
he formed of men, manners, and things. The last in the 
world was the author of Tristram Shandy to have sat 
as moral or aesthetic critic on Smollett. How the mighty 
sledge-hammer of contempt wielded by Sir Walter Scott 
crushed the unfeeling, though far from radically ill-natured 
critic ! Sterne wrote : " The learned Smelfungus travelled 
from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on, but 
he set out with the spleen and the jaundice, and every object 
he passed by was discoloured and distorted. He wrote an 
account of them, but it was nothing but an account of his 
miserable feelings. I met Smelfungus in the grand portico 
of the Pantheon. He was just coming out of it. " It is 
nothing but a huge cockpit," said he. " I wish you had said 
nothing worse of the Venus Medicis," replied I — for in 
passing through Florence I had heard he had fallen foul 
upon the goddess, and used her worse than a common 
strumpet, without the least provocation in nature. I popped 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 115 

upon Smelfungus again in Turin, in his return home, and a 
sad tale of sorrowful adventures he had to tell, wherein he 
spoke of "moving accidents by flood and field, and of the 
cannibals which each other eat, the Anthropophagi." He 
had been flayed alive and bedeviled, and worse used than 
Saint Bartholomew at every stage he had come at. " I'll 
tell it, said Smelfungus, "to the world." "You had better 
tell it," said I, " to your physician." ' Now, though Smollett 
deserved castigation for inflicting his miseries on the public 
and ridiculing many of their most cherished ideals at a 
time when he was mentally unfit to judge, the passage cited 
above is not the manner in which such literary punishment 
should be given. Thereupon says Sir Walter : ' Be it said 
without offence to the memory of that witty and elegant 
writer (Sterne), it is more easy to assume in composition 
an air of alternate gaiety and sensibility, than to practise 
the virtues of generosity and benevolence which Smollett 
exercised during his whole life, though often, like his own 
Matthew Bramble, under the disguise of peevishness and 
irritability. Sterne's writings show much flourish concerning 
virtues of which his life is understood to have produced 
little fruit ; the temper of Smollett was — 

"Like a lusty winter, 
Frosty, but kindly."' 

Alas ! not long now was the worn tenement of the great 
novelist to hold his fiery spirit. After 1766 the end was 
known to be only a question of a year or two at most. 
Manfully and nobly did he receive the intelligence. There 
was no repining at the hardness of his lot. ' My poor Nancy; 
let me make the best use of the time for her.' Constant 
rheumatism, and the pain arising from a neglected ulcer 
which had developed into a chronic sore, had so drained 



u6 FAMOUS SCOTS 

his strength that there was no recovering the lost ground. A 
premature break-up of the system, rather than the positive 
disease of consumption, numbered his days. 

Soon after returning home from the Continent, he repaired 
to Scotland to visit his aged mother. Affecting in the last 
degree was that visit. To both the knowledge was present 
that never more on earth would they meet. The old lady, 
with that keen insight into the future which often distin- 
guishes the aged, said, ' We'll no' be long parted, any way. 
If you go first, I'll be close on your heels : if I lead the way, 
ye'll no' be far behind me, I'm thinking.' And so it proved. 
Though in Scotland he enjoyed a partial restoration to 
health that cheered some of his friends, his mother knew 
better. ' The last flicker of the candle is aye the brightest,' 
she said. While in Scotland he visited, with his sister Mrs. 
Telfer and his biographer Dr. Moore, the Smolletts of 
Bonhill, where he received a warm welcome from his 
cousin, who pressed him to stay there for some months and 
get his health thoroughly established. 

But the treadmill in London was waiting for its victim. 
In the beginning of 1767 he returned to London, having 
sojourned at Bath for a time with Mrs. Smollett. Once 
more he was back tugging at the oar, doing odd work for 
the Critical Review, compiling travels, translating from 
French, Spanish, or Latin sundry books of merely ephemeral 
interest. Then he contributed to the periodical literature 
of the day — anything, in fact, to keep that wolf from the door 
which every year seemed to approach nearer and yet nearer. 

Only two more works of any moment was he to live to 
accomplish — one, an indifferent production judged by his 
own high standard — the other, like the dying cygnet's song 
in Grecian fable — the greatest and the last ! In 1769 ap- 
peared The History and Adventures of an Atom, in 2 vols. 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 117 

i2mo. This is a politico-social satire, wherein are repre- 
sented the several leaders of political parties from 1754 till 
the dissolution of Lord Chatham's administration in 1762, 
but under the thin veil of Japanese names. George in. was 
consumed with the fallacy that he was the first statesman in 
the Europe of his day. His experiments in diplomacy nearly 
brought Britain to ruin. Had he not bullied and badgered 
the elder Pitt into resignation, America would have been 
to-day an integral part of the Empire, which would have 
feared no rival from pole to pole. But such was not to 
be. Besides, out of the blundering of the honest but short- 
sighted monarch the liberties of the English people were to 
be evolved. The History of an Atom was successful, but 
is to-day the portion of Smollett's writings with which we 
could most comfortably dispense. It is a satire, or intended 
for such, but accommodates itself to none of the known 
rules of any school of satiric writing. Neither to Swift, 
Arbuthnot, Steele, nor Butler does it exhibit affinity. 

Towards the middle of 1768 the fact became evident to 
all, that if Smollett's life was to be preserved, he must hence- 
forth live far from the bitter winters of England. To leave 
his fatherland he was not sorry. Faction had embittered 
his existence during the past few years, and faction was 
jealously to pursue him with its malice even to the end. 
His only political friends neglected him who had fought 
so well and indefatigably for them. The Earl of Bute with 
but little exertion could have placed Smollett at once beyond 
the necessity of such killing labour. But the Butes, then, 
were proverbially notorious for their callousness and their 
ingratitude. 

When the final verdict was given, Smollett endeavoured 
to obtain some consulship abroad, that would have lessened 
his labours. He was still dependent on his pen for daily 



n8 FAMOUS SCOTS 

bread. Almost despairingly he implored even his political 
enemies to help him to some means whereby he might 
demit some portion of his killing work. But his ' noble ' 
friends were all deaf. Lord Shelburne was applied to, but 
stated the consulships at Nice and Leghorn were already 
promised to some of his own political creatures. One man 
only stood his friend ; one man only, and he an opponent 
albeit a countryman, did his best for Smollett, but, alas ! 
unavailingly. All honour to David Hume the historian, 
then Under Secretary of State ! In the end the dying 
novelist was disappointed at all points. He had to go 
abroad depending on the staff that had supplied him with 
bread all through the long years until now — and which 
alone would not now fail him — his pen ! 

Smollett left England in December 1768, and proceeded 
to Leghorn via Lucca and Pisa. Here he settled at Monte 
Nova, a little township situated on the side of a mountain 
overlooking the sea. Dr. Armstrong, his friend and country- 
man, had secured for him a beautiful villa on the outskirts 
of the village. Here he gradually grew weaker, but was 
tended with the utmost devotion by his wife, and some 
of the English families in the neighbourhood. Here, too, 
he penned the greatest of his novels, the work that for 
its subtle insight into human nature, its keen and incisive 
studies of character, its delightful humour, its matchless 
bonhomie and raciness, takes rank amidst the treasured 
classics of our literature — the immortal Humphrey Clinker. 

But with this exertion the feeble flame of the great 
novelist's life slowly flickered out. His work was done, 
and nobly done. He had carved for himself an imperish- 
able niche in the great Temple of Fame. His last words 
were spoken to his wife — ' All is well, my dear ; ' and on 
the 2 1 st October 1771, in the 52nd year of his age, Tobias 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 119 

George Smollett laid down the burden of that life which 
had pressed so wearily upon him, and passed — within the 
Silence ! 

He had the pleasure of seeing Humphrey Clinker in its 
published form a day or two before his death. When the 
public learned that the hand which so often had delighted 
them in the past would now delight them no more, a mourn- 
ful interest was exhibited in his last work. Edition after 
edition was exhausted. But what booted it to him, then, 
when the strife and the anguish as well as the exultation 
born of success were all over ? ' After labour cometh rest, 
and after strife the guerdon.' Alas ! too late the latter came 
to cheer him whose life had been one long-drawn-out epic 
of anguish from the cradle to the grave ! 

Had Smollett lived four years longer, he would have in- 
herited the estate of Bonhill and an income of ^"iooo per 
annum, which in default of him passed to Mrs. Telfer, his 
sister, and her heirs. O the irony of fate ! Alas ! the 
thorn of apprehension which disturbed his dying pillow 
proved too true a dread. His wife was left in Leghorn 
in dire penury, until relieved by the charity of friends 
who were not relatives, and also by the proceeds of a 
theatrical performance given in her aid after some years 
by Mr. Graham of Gartmore. An indelible stain is it upon 
the Telfers and the Smolletts that they should have allowed 
the widow of their most distinguished relative to die de- 
pendent on the charity of strangers. But relatives are 
proverbially the hardest-hearted of potential benefactors 
when the day of trouble comes. Poor " Narcissa " ! the 
lines of her life were not cast in pleasant places. 

Smollett was interred in the English cemetery at Leghorn, 
with the blue Mediterranean stretching in front of his last 
resting-place. Many are the pilgrims that journey to his 



120 FAMOUS SCOTS 

tomb, and as the years roll on they increase rather than 
diminish. A plain monument was erected by his wife over 
the remains, the Latin inscription on which was written by 
his friend Dr. Armstrong, the poet. At Bonhill, a splendid 
obelisk, over sixty feet high, was raised on the banks of the 
Leven, by his cousin James Smollett (a few months before 
his own death), the inscription being revised and corrected 
by Dr. Johnson. 

Dr. Moore, as the friend of Smollett, has^preserved for us 
the appearance and portrait of the great novelist in the 
following description : " The person of Dr. Smollett was 
stout and well proportioned, his countenance engaging, his 
manner reserved, with a certain air of dignity that seemed 
to indicate that he was not unconscious of his own powers. 
He was of a disposition so humane and generous that he 
was ever ready to serve the unfortunate, and on some 
occasions to assist them beyond what his circumstances 
could justify. Though few could penetrate with more 
acuteness into character, yet none was more apt to overlook 
misconduct when attended by misfortune. Free from 
vanity, Smollett had a considerable share of pride and great 
sensibility; his passions were easily moved, and too im- 
petuous when roused. He could not conceal his contempt 
of folly, his detestation of fraud, nor refrain from proclaim- 
ing his indignation against every instance of oppression. 
He was of an intrepid, independent, imprudent disposition, 
equally incapable of deceit and adulation, and more dis- 
posed to cultivate the acquaintance of those he could serve 
than of those who could serve him.' 

Such being the character of the man, the key is obtained 
to the enigma of Smollet's lack of political and social 
success. He was of too honest a nature to do the dirty 
work of the ' Ministers ' of the time, amongst whom inde- 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 121 

pendence of character was rated as a sin of the first 
magnitude. But in the hearts of the admirers of his 
literary works, Smollett will also live as one of the greatest 
of our countrymen — a man whose virtues are yearly be- 
coming recognised in their true light, as readers realise he 
is one of the world's great moral teachers, whose lessons are 
communicated by exhibiting the naked hideousness of vice. 
And so the star of his fame will shine more and yet 
more clearly unto the perfect day ! 



CHAPTER X 

SMOLLETT AS A NOVELIST 

Smollett, although gaining distinction in other branches 
of literature, was primarily and essentially a novelist. He 
wrote history, and wrote it well ; drama, and wrote it only 
passably ; travels but little better, and poetry decidedly 
mechanically, save in the ' Ode to Independence.' In the 
novel alone did he by prescriptive right take his place in 
the front rank of British writers of fiction. Wherein then 
lay his strength, and in what respects did he differ from 
Richardson and Fielding? To institute any comparative 
estimate between the three is foolish in the last degree. 
The grounds for such a comparison do not exist, save in the 
initial fact that all three wrote novels ! 

Smollett was, like Scott, an unequalled observer. 
Nothing missed his ' inevitable eye,' either in a situation, 
an incident, or a landscape. If he had not Fielding's keen 
power of vision into the mental and moral characteristics of 
his fellow-men, he had twice his aptness of objective 
photography. The ludicrous aspects of a circumstance or 
of a saying impressed him deeply. He never seemed to 
forget the humorous bearings of any experience through 
which he had passed, or of which he had learned. The 
affaire de cosur with Melinda in Roderick Random, the 
challenge and arrest through the affection of Strap, also the 
inimitable 'banquet after the manner of the ancients' in 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 123 

Peregrine Pickle, were described from incidents occurring in 
Smollett's own history. To few writers has the faculty been 
given in measure so rich of projecting objectively the scenes 
he was describing upon some outward, yet imaginary canvas, 
whence he transferred them to his pages. The naturalness 
of setting in the case of all the incidents is so marked, and 
stands out in such glaring contrast to those recorded in the 
Memoirs of a Lady of Quality (published in Peregrine 
Pickle), that one scarcely knows which to admire most — the 
originality of the genius or the wonderful fidelity and im- 
pressiveness of the painter's reproduction. 

Smollett's strength lay in his great power of self-restraint. 
He knew what he could do, and with rare wisdom he kept 
himself within the limits of his imaginative ability. He 
could very easily have made either Roderick Random or 
Peregrine Pickle a sentimental amorist, sighing after his 
mistress, and suffering all the delicious hopes and fears and 
ups and downs of the knights-errant of love. But therein 
he would have trenched upon Richardson's province, and 
placed himself in a decidedly unfavourable comparison with 
the author of Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe. He might have 
developed a splendid character-study out of the colossal 
Borgia-like wickedness of Ferdinand Count Fathom, who 
can alone claim kindred, in the pitiless thirst for crime 
which possesses him, with that repulsively brutal creation of 
Shakespeare's early days, Aaron in Titus Andronicus, who, 
when dying, curses the world with the words — 

c If one good deed in all my life I did, 
I do repent it from my very soul.' 

But had he done so, he would have entered into direct 
competition with Fielding j a competition he knew he was 
unfitted to support. But in his own department he was 



i2 4 FAMOUS SCOTS 

supreme. In fertility of invention and apt adaptation of 
means to end he had no rival. His novels present one 
bewildering succession of accidents, entanglements, escapes, 
imprisonments, love-makings, and what not, until the mind 
positively becomes cloyed with the banquet of incident 
provided for it. A less profound genius than Smollett 
would in all probability have worn itself out in a vain 
attempt to rival his great contemporaries, on the principle 
1 never venture, never win.' Smollett was a surer critic, on 
this point at least, than many of his friends, who were con- 
tinually urging him to attempt something in the mode of 
Fielding. ' There is but one husbandman can reap that 
field,' he replied. He knew what he could do and what 
he could not do, and therein, as has been said, lay his 
strength. 

Viewing his novels as a whole, — Roderick Random, Pere- 
grine Pickle, Ferdinand Count Fathom, Launcelot Greaves, 
The Adventures of an Atom, and Humphrey Clinker, — the 
first quality which strikes a critical reader is the family like- 
ness existing between all the leading characters. Dissimilar 
though Roderick Random and Ferdinand Count Fathom 
may be in their impulses toward evil, distinct though Pere- 
grine Pickle is from Launcelot Greaves, Matthew Bramble, 
and Lismahago in what may be termed his nobler qualities, 
there is nevertheless in all that happy-go-lucky carelessness, 
that supreme indifference to consequences, that courage that 
never flinches from the penalties of its own misdeeds, but 
accepts them without a murmur — in a word, a bonhomie 
diversified by egotism, that appears in equal measure in no 
other novelist of his time. Richardson displays that senti- 
mental, melodramatic, watery ' gush ' which the taste of last 
century denominated pathos — the sort of thing Dickens 
long after described in the phrase ' drawing tears from his 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 125 

eyes and a handkerchief from his pocket ' ; but of that 
quality there is not the faintest trace in Smollett. If any- 
thing, his characters are too callous, too fond of the rough- 
and-tumble Tom-and-Jerry life in which their creator so 
perceptibly revelled. Fielding, on the other hand, patiently 
elaborates his characters, adding here a line and there 
a curve, heightening the light in one place, deepening the 
shading in another, never picturing an incident or a trait 
without some definite end to be served in perfecting the 
final portrait. Smollett never takes time for such micro- 
scopic character studies. He is a veritable pen-and-ink 
draughtsman. With bold, rapid, vigorous strokes, he 
sketches, through the agency of incident, the outlines of 
his characters, filling in these outlines with but few sub- 
sidiary details regarding the feelings and moral impulses of 
his creations. For such he has neither the time nor the 
space. Let any reader lift the conceptions of Roderick 
Random, or Peregrine Pickle, or Matthew Bramble out of 
the setting of the story and study them apart, paying no 
heed to anything affecting the other personages, and he will 
see at once how completely Smollett relied on incident to 
do the work of explaining and analysing the feelings of his 
heroes. Fielding was the greater artist, Smollett the better 
story-teller; Fielding was the greater moral teacher, 
Smollett the more vigorous painter of contemporary 
manners. Further, let the reader carefully study Lovelace 
in Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe, Blifil in Fielding's novel 
of Tom Jones, and Smollett's Ferdinand Count Fathom, 
and he will perceive in even a stronger degree the diverse 
method of the three great novelists. Richardson builds up 
what might be called the ' architectonic ' of the creation by 
a series of great scenes wherein dialogue plays the greatest 
part. Lovelace has all the light-hearted villainy of a man to 



126 FAMOUS SCOTS 

whom virtue is a myth, who has no conscience, and whose 
standard of right is his gross animal devilishness. Richard- 
son does everything by square and rule. He expends at 
the outset a wealth of ingenuity! in portraying the most 
insignificant qualities of Lovelace's nature. And so fully 
does he make us acquainted with his nature, that at the end 
of the novel we know in reality very little more of him than 
we did at the outset. Fielding, on the other hand, winds 
his way into the very heart of a character, ' like a serpent 
round its prey,' as Goldsmith said of Burke's treatment of 
a subject in conversation. Every chapter gives us some 
addition to the creation, even to the very close of the 
novel. But when that is reached, the great synthesis is 
complete. Not a trait is lacking, and Master Blifil stands 
pilloried to all time as the type of everything that is con- 
temptible and deceitful. Not so Smollett. In the case of 
Ferdinand Count Fathom the initial description of the 
character is reduced to a minimum. Everything is left to 
the effect produced by incident. All Fathom's pitilessness, 
his absolute love of vice for its own sake, his colossal 
selfishness, are in reality merely suggested to the reader's 
own mind, by the thread of rapidly succeeding incident, not 
formally labelled as such. In the case of both Richardson 
and Fielding the author is constantly present in his creation. 
So with Smollett, he is ever in evidence. None of them 
attain that superb art of Walter Scott, who simply effaces 
himself in his creations, or, as Hazlitt says : ' He sits like 
a magician in his cell and conjures up all shapes and sights 
to the view ; but in the midst of all this phantasmagoria 
the author himself never appears to take part with his 
characters. It is the perfection of art to conceal art, and 
this is here done so completely, that, while it adds to our 
pleasure in the work, it seems to take away from the merit 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 127 

of the author. As he does not thrust himself into the 
foreground, he loses the credit of the performance.' 

By the critical student closely attentive to the development 
of Smollett's genius, the fact will assuredly be noted that 
in the gallery of his characters, chronologically considered, 
there is a definitely progressive growth or increase in the 
power wherewith he limned character. Bearing in mind 
our initial position, that in Smollett's art incident was the 
prime element, and the delineation of character subordinate 
to the artistic arrangement of the links in the chain of 
circumstance, I would invite attention to the following 
analysis, as being, in my opinion, the conclusion to be 
deduced from a patient, faithful, and impartial study of the 
personages named. My contention is that in the character 
sequence we have a series of ascending psychologic 
gradations, each one presenting features of greater com- 
plexity and philosophic force, as the author realised more 
clearly the value of a system in that concatenation of event 
which influenced so intimately his personages. 

Roderick Random is little else than the Gil Bias of Le 
Sage Anglified, with some hints borrowed from the excellent 
Lazarillo de Tormes of Hurtado de Mendoza. In his 
Preface to the novel Smollett acknowledges his indebtedness 
to French and Spanish fiction, and announces his conviction 
of the superiority of the novel of circumstance over all 
others. Roderick Random, therefore, as a novel consists of 
a succession of incidents, some startling, some improbable, 
some foolish, and some highly effective, but all loosely 
strung together without much artistic arrangement or relative 
affinity to each other. The book is a record of the 
'adventures' of the hero from his cradle to his marriage. 
As in the case of all such books, the peg whereon the 
incidents are hung is very slender. All is loose and 



128 FAMOUS SCOTS 

disjointed, happy-go-lucky in narration, rapid, swift, and 
evanescent in the mental pictures produced. Roderick 
is only a big schoolboy, full of animal spirits and animal 
passions, far, very far from being a saint, yet as far from 
being an irreclaimable sinner. He is the plaything of his 
passions, carried like a straw on the stream of circumstance. 
He takes everything as it comes, be it weal be it woe, be it 
good fortune or evil, with supreme nonchalance. He shows 
little regard or gratitude to his uncle, Lieutenant Bowling. 
He treats his poor friend Strap, whose only fault was his 
fidelity, worse than indifferently. He is not by any means 
faithful, and certainly not very respectful, to his lady-love, 
Narcissa ; nay, he even takes the discovery of his long-lost 
father — a circumstance materially altering his social station 
— quite as a matter of course. Roderick Random was the 
spirit incarnate of the cold-blooded, coarse-fibred, religion- 
less eighteenth century — a century wherein virtue was per- 
petually on the lips, and vice as perpetually in the hearts 
of its men, a century wherein its women were colourless 
puppets, without true individuality or definite aims, but 
oscillating aimlessly between Deism and Methodism to 
escape from the ennui that resulted from the lack of true 
culture. Roderick Random as a creation was a purely 
adventitious one, resulting from the fortuitous concourse 
of incidents. How the character was to shape itself, 
morally or mentally, seemed to trouble the creator little, 
provided the events were sufficiently lively and brisk, 
and the interest in the story was maintained unflaggingly. 
Incidents were piled up, whether tending to heighten the 
effect of the dramatis persona, or not. There was no 
conservation of material, no wise economy, no evidence of 
careful selection. Prodigality and profusion were every- 
where present, with the signs of youth and inexperience 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 129 

writ large over all. In fact, the character of Roderick 
Random, critically estimated as a work of art, is little 
better than Lobeyra's Amadis de Gaul, a portrait limned 
wholly out of incident, flung on the canvas without pre- 
meditation, and frequently presenting inconsistencies and 
conflicting traits. There is no gradual development of 
character contemporaneously with the evolution of event. 
The character has gathered no wisdom during its course. 
It is represented to us in quite as immature a state at the 
end of the story as at the beginning. There is a heartless- 
ness, a moral callousness about Roderick which all his 
experiences never seemed to remove. Excessively repulsive 
is this phase of the hero's character ; nay, the novel is only 
saved from being as darkly shaded and as morally repellent 
as Count Fathom, by the pathetic doglike fidelity of poor 
Strap, who exhibits more true nobility of nature in a 
chapter, than Roderick Random in the whole book. 

From the criticisms on Roderick Random, Smollett 
learned many lessons. He noted that, though his free and 
easy method of letting character shape itself through the 
medium of incident had its advantages, these were liable 
to be counterbalanced unless the chain of incident was 
so forged that each link would be related to the leading 
characters of the novel, so as to promote their development 
and tend to fill in the bare black and white outlines by 
some distinguishing trait, mannerism, or eccentricity. In 
Peregrine Pickle, therefore, the characters are seen to be 
more vertebrate. They are no longer the stalking lay 
figures of the first novel. Albeit Peregrine is only Roderick 
under another name, and endowed with a year or two more 
of experience and sense, — the subtle differentiation of 
personages visible in Humphrey Clinker having yet to be 
learned, — there is a marked improvement in the technique 
9 



i 3 o FAMOUS SCOTS 

of the novel. The chain of incident is every whit as varied, 
the events as events are more stirring and startling than 
in the first novel, but there is now the attempt — though 
as yet but an attempt — to subject the unflagging flow 
of incident to an artistic adaptation towards definite ends. 
Incident is no longer piled on incident regardless of the 
fact whether it tend to advance the development of the 
characters or not. Then Smollett has learned the value of 
contrast in character-painting. Peregrine is contrasted with 
such humorous creations as Godfrey Gauntlet, Commodore 
Hawser Trunnion, Lieutenant Hatchway, and Bo'sun Tom 
Pipes. The virtue of relative proportion among his 
characters according to their ratio of importance in 
influencing the story, though still faulty, has been carefully 
studied. Peregrine therefore is supreme as hero. There 
is no Strap to dispute the honours with him, and as a 
portrait he is more consistent than in the case of Roderick. 
Though the same callous indifference to morality is 
manifest, though the likeness to Lazarillo de Tormes is 
even more patent in this latter creation than in the former, 
though the same polite villainy passes current under the 
name of gallantry, the same cheap appreciation of female 
honour, — witness that degrading scene so reprobated by 
Sir Walter Scott, where Peregrine assails Emilia Gauntlet's 
chastity, — the hero is not so glaring a moral imbecile as 
Roderick. He has gleams of better things. But, as in the 
former novel so in the latter, the noblest character of the 
book is the foil or contrast to Peregrine — Godfrey Gauntlet, 
on whom Smollett seems to lavish all his powers. 

Then comes Ferdina?id Cou?it Fathom, indicating a 
still further advance in the technique of novel-writing. In 
this work the stage is not so crowded as in Roderick 
Random and Peregrine Pickle. The whole interest centres 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 131 

in the career of crime of this archfiend, this pitiless Nero, 
Iago, and Caesar Borgia in one. A more terrible picture 
of human depravity has never been drawn unless in Othello 
and Titus Andronicus. But Smollett had now learned the 
lesson of the conservation of imaginative power. There 
are no needless incidents in this novel. Everyone reveals 
the character of the hero in a new light. Relative 
proportion, differentiation, and contrast have all been 
carefully studied. Notwithstanding our loathing of crimes 
so unspeakable, notwithstanding our hatred of animalism 
so unbridled as would sacrifice the trustful Monimia to 
his base passions, a sort of sneaking sympathy with Fathom 
begins to find entrance into the breast. As in Paradise Lost 
one feels a sorrow for Satan's position after his magnificent 
resistance to the Almighty, so here the same sentiment 
finds place. One hopes Fathom may have time given 
him wherein to repent. But Smollett was now too 
consummate an artist for that concession to sentimentalism. 
In Roderick Random he might have committed such an 
artistic mistake. Not now. Fathom receives retributive 
justice, and only repents when he has expiated to the 
uttermost his sins and wrongdoings. 

Passing by Sir Launcelot Greaves and The History of an 
Atom as outside the pale of our criticism, inasmuch as they 
were written when he was worried and distracted with other 
matters, besides being in wretched health, so that they are 
unworthy of his genius, we come to the consideration of 
Matthew Bramble and Lieutenant Lismahago in Humphrey 
Clinker. They are undoubtedly the two greatest characters 
in the Smollett gallery of imaginative portraits. They must 
be viewed together. To separate them is to lose the 
reflected lustre they cast by contrast on each other. 
Likenesses many and important they have. Both are 



i 3 2 FAMOUS SCOTS 

sufferers from the world's fickle changes. Both are weary 
and irritated with society's meannesses and petty falsehoods. 
Both are testy, tetchy, and prickly-tempered. But how 
truly men ! Smollett had now reached the meridian of 
his powers. He realised now that in a great novel incident 
and the delineation of character must occupy co-ordinate 
positions. To assign excessive predominance to either, 
is to mar the ultimate effect. Therefore in Humphrey 
Clinker, while still revelling in inexhaustible variety of 
incident, Smollett assigns to the synthesis of character its 
proper place. In place of portraying the characters 
himself, he adopted the course, so favoured by his great 
rival Richardson, and long years after to be employed 
with such rare effect by Walter Scott and William Makepeace 
Thackeray, of achieving the evolution of character through 
the medium of letters, a mutual analysis as well as a 
distinctive synthesis. Risky though the expedient was, 
for it demanded a man of the highest genius to make the 
letters popular, in Smollett's hands it proved eminently 
successful. We accordingly have Matthew Bramble alter- 
nately described by himself and Jerry Melford, each giving 
varying phases of the same kindly, dogmatic, generously 
obstinate, and wholly noble-hearted fellow. Lismahago's 
character, besides being drawn by the two above-named 
fellow-travellers in that expedition to Scotland wherein 
Humphrey Clinker was the footman and hero, has the 
blanks in the portrait filled in by Miss Tabitha Bramble, 
the bitter-sweet spinster whom he afterwards married, and 
the inimitably delightful lady's-maid, Winnifred Jenkins. 
More highly finished pictures could scarcely be desired. 
Side by side with Scott's Dugald Dalgetty and Thackeray's 
Esmond, Lismahago may assuredly be placed, while Matthew 
Bramble falls little short, in completeness of details, of 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 133 

Jonathan Oldbuck in the Antiquary. Yet Bramble is still 
Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle purged of their 
faults and follies, and with the experience of years upon 
them. We realise that Bramble possesses all their short- 
comings, albeit held in check by his strong good sense, 
while they potentially had all his virtues, though the fever 
of youth i' the blood obscured them for the nonce. A 
noble gallery do these five characters compose. If Fathom 
be the Cain or the Esau of the company, he has many of 
the family features to show to what race he belongs. 

In one imaginative type Smollett has never been ap- 
proached as a creator, to wit, in his delineation of British 
seamen. Captain Marryat exhibits a greater knowledge of 
nautical affairs than Smollett, but nothing in the younger 
novelist quite touches the racy humour of Commodore 
Hawser Trunnion, Lieutenant Bowling, Hatchway, and 
Pipes. David Hannay, in his introduction to Japhet in 
Search of a Father, says : ' Captain Savage of the Diomede, 

Captain M of the King's Own, Captain Hector 

Maclean in Jacob Faithful, Terence O'Brien, the mate 
Martin, the midshipman Gascoigne, Thomas Saunders the 
boatswain's mate, and Swinburne the quartermaster, are 
beyond all question not less lifelike portraits of the officers 
and men of the navy than Trunnion and Bowling, Pipes and 
Hatchway. In one respect Marryat had an inevitable 
advantage over his predecessor. Smollett never shows us 
the seaman at his work. He could not, because he did not 
know it sufficiently well to understand it himself.' That is 
perfectly true. But, on the other hand, Marryat's intimate 
knowledge was often a hindrance to his art. It led him to 
inflict the minutiae of the service on his readers more 
than was needful. Hence the reason why some parts of 
Marryat's books are decidedly tiresome. Smollett's are 



i 3 4 FAMOUS SCOTS 

never so. His sense of artistic proportion was finer than 
Marryat's, and he avoided the pitfall whereinto the other 
fell. As a delineator of the nautical character, Mr. Clark 
Russell is the greatest we have had since Smollett, and 
in him the latter finds his most dangerous rival. Yet, if 
Mr. Russell has equalled his master in many other respects, 
it is doubtful if he has quite reached the high-water mark of 
Commodore Trunnion and Lismahago. 

Finally, Smollett's women are deserving of a word. 
Sainte Beuve said he judged a novelist's powers by the 
manner in which he drew his female characters. If so, 
Smollett would not have excited much sympathy in the 
mind of the brilliant author of the Cat/series du Lundi. 
His women are of varying excellence. Narcissa in Roderick 
Rci7idom and Emilia in Peregrine Pickle are only sweet 
dolls. Until his closing years he could not differentiate 
between puling sentimentality and piquancy. Into the 
charming perversity, the delightful contradictoriness, that 
often make up for us one-half the attractiveness of the 
female character, he could not enter. To rise to the height 
of spiritual insight that was requisite to conceive and 
execute a Di Vernon, an Ethel Newcome, or a Rose 
Vincy, was for him impossible, simply because he could not 
realise in his earlier years of authorship that women are the 
equals, not the inferiors of man. The hapless Miss Williams 
in Roderick Random exhibits this feeling on the part of 
Smollett. She was nobility itself in character, yet she was 
made over to Strap. One of the finest of his creations is 
the hapless Monimia in Count Fathom, Tenderness, 
purity, grace, and beauty are all united in her. She falls, it 
is true, but her fall left her virtue unimpugned, seeing that 
her betrayer resorted to means as cruel as they were 
irresistible to accomplish his diabolic purpose. Monimia 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 135 

occupies a pedestal apart, but, she excepted, the two most 
delightful creations in all his works are those in Humphrey 
Clinker, Tabitha Bramble and Winnifred Jenkins. Lydia 
Melford is too milk-and-waterish, but the two first- 
named are drawn with masterly precision and force. 
Tabitha Bramble is a capital portrait of the soured, dis- 
appointed old maid, whose lover had died long before, but 
to whose memory she had been ever faithful — a woman 
whose nature is only encrusted with prejudice, not inter- 
penetrated by it, so that we may justly hope that, under the 
loving care of Lieutenant Lismahago, her frigidity may 
thaw, and that in matrimony she may discover the world 
not to be so very bad after all. Winnifred Jenkins is the 
prototype of Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan's Rivals, and is 
infinitely more amusing. All the vanity, self-assertiveness, 
and jealousy of a small mind, conjointly with the love of 
appearing to move in a higher circle of society than she 
really does, are admirably sketched, while her mis- 
appropriate use of the language of that circle is most 
felicitously rendered. The portrait is Smollett's best, and 
no touch is finer than Winnifred's conduct in the menagerie. 
Let her speak for herself^/* Last week I went with mistress 
to the Tower to see the crowns and wild beastis. There 
was a monstracious lion with teeth half a quarter long, and 
a gentleman bid me not go near him if I wasn't a maid, 
being as how he would roar, and tear, and play the dickens. 
Now I had no mind to go near him, for I cannot abide 
such dangerous honeymils, not I — but mistress would go, 
and the beast kept such a roaring and bouncing that I 
tho't he would have broke his cage and devoured us all ; 
and the gentleman tittered forsooth ; but I'll go death upon 
it, I will, that my lady is as good a firgkin as the child 
unborn ; and therefore either the gentleman told a phib, or 



136 FAMOUS SCOTS 

the lion ought to be set in the stocks for bearing false 
witness against his neighbour.' Tabitha Bramble and Win 
Jenkins are those two in Smollett's gallery of fiction which 
the world will not willingly let die. 

Such, then, is Smollett as a novelist — the great master 
of incident and humorous narration, the painter of the 
faults, foibles, and eccentricities of his fellow-men. In his 
own sphere he was unrivalled, and he in nothing showed 
more saliently his good sense than by refusing to attempt 
works for which he knew he was both by temperament and 
training unfitted. I cannot quite agree with Professor 
Saintsbury's view in his charming and sympathetic Life 
of Smollett, prefixed to what bids fair to be the standard 
edition of his works. 1 ' The only one of the deeper and 
higher passions which seems to have stirred Smollett was 
patriotism, in which a Scot rarely fails, unless he is an 
utter gaby or an utter scoundrel.' Does not the worthy 
Professor, following the popular definition, fail to differ- 
entiate between an emotion and a passion. In depicting the 
passions, Smollett, I grant, was singularly deficient ; in such 
emotions as patriotism, sympathy with the oppressed, and a 
pure devotion to the cause of truth, he showed himself a 
man whose heart was permeated with the warmest and 
deepest enthusiasm. 

1 Works of T. G. Smollett, edited by George Saintsbury. London : 
Gibbings & Co. 



CHAPTER XI 

SMOLLETT AS HISTORIAN AND CRITIC 

A hundred and thirty years ago, if one had been asked to 
name the six great historians then alive, Smollett with marked 
unanimity would have been mentioned amongst the first. 
In fact, Hume, Robertson, and he were then reckoned as 
the illustrious triumvirate of Scots whose genius, in default 
of others native born, had been consecrated to the task of 
lauding for bread and fame the annals of the land whose 
glories were supposed to be to them so distasteful. The 
Union of the countries was not yet sufficiently remote to 
have borne as its fruit that harvest of commercial, political, 
and agricultural benefits that have accrued to both lands 
as its result. The jealousy wherewith Scotsmen were 
regarded in England was a legacy from the days when the 
subjugation of the territory north of Tweed was a standing 
item in English foreign policy, from the reign of that 
greatly misjudged monarch, Edward i. (Longshanks), to the 
days of the fourth of his name, who recognised the younger 
brother of James hi., the exiled Duke of Albany, as King 
of Scots under the title of Alexander iv., on condition that 
he acknowledged Edward as lord paramount and feudal 
superior. 

The school of historians represented by Rapin, Oldmixon, 
Tindal, Carte, and Hooke, honest, hard-working investi- 
gators, but without any sense of method or proportion in 

137 



138 FAMOUS SCOTS 

classifying or arranging materials, and vigorous anti-Scots, 
was alarmed by the success attending the publication of 
Hume's History of England in 1754-61, Principal Robert- 
son's History of Scotland in 1758-59, and Smollett's History 
of England in 1758. When the Continuation by the last- 
named appeared in 1762, it was exposed, as we have seen, to 
a perfect broadside of misrepresentation and unjust reflec 
tions, prompted by the historians above-named and their 
booksellers, whose literary property seemed to them to be 
endangered. That some of the criticisms were just, and 
founded upon the discovery of genuine errors and blemishes 
in the history, cannot be denied. But, on the other hand, 
three-fourths of the allegations were baseless, because pro- 
ceeding from spleen, and not from genuine enthusiasm in 
the cause of historic truth. 

For example, the objections urged by the friends and 
supporters of Rapin's History were that Smollett was too 
hurried in his survey, that he took too many facts on trust, 
that he was unfair in his critical estimates of eminent 
personages, and finally, that his style was one better adapted 
for the novel than for historical compositions. To these 
allegations the friends of Oldmixon added that he permitted 
party prejudice to colour all his judgments. In replying to 
such charges we virtually analyse Smollett's merits as a 
historian. A double duty is therefore discharged by so 
doing. 

Smollett as a historian might say with Horace, and 
assuredly with truth, * Nullius addictus jurare in verba 
magistri — a slavish disciple of the tenets of no master am I.' 
Though unstinted in his praise of Hume's calm, lucid 
survey, of his careful generalisations and eminently com- 
prehensive method, though likewise a generous admirer of 
Robertson's brilliant word-pictures and glowingly eloquent 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 139 

narrative, wherein the long dead seemed to live again, he had 
his own ideal of the writing of history, and it savoured 
rather of Tacitus than of Thucydides. His method con- 
sisted in presenting a series of great outstanding events 
covering the entire period under notice, and round these to 
group the subordinate occurrences either resulting from or 
happening contemporaneously with them. He was a firm 
believer in the doctrine that political freedom and com- 
mercial honesty are the two great bulwarks of any State. 
Though a Tory in name, he was in reality more of a philo- 
sophical Whig, rather a champion of the rights of the people 
than a lover and defender of aristocracies, oligarchies, and 
monopolies. 'That country only is truly prosperous that 
is in the highest sense free, and that country alone is free 
where a hierarchy of knowledge governs, uninfluenced by 
faction and undisturbed by prejudice,' he wrote in the 
Critical Revieiv. The sentiments are somewhat vague and 
indefinite, but they show that he was striving to emancipate 
himself from the leading-strings of party prejudice. 

Although the fact is beyond doubt that Smollett's 
historical works were written exceedingly rapidly, on the 
other hand, we must remember that the rapidity of produc- 
tion merely applied to the mechanical work of transcribing 
what had been already carefully thought out. Like Dr. 
Johnson, Smollett was possessed of a most retentive 
memory. He rarely committed any of his works to paper 
until he had thoroughly thought them out in his mind, and 
had tested them over and over again in that searching 
alembic. In neither case, therefore, was the composition 
hurried. All that was done was to expedite its transcription. 
Smollett's historical judgments, in place of being hastily 
formed, were the result of patient study and thought. On 
this point we have the evidence of Wilkes, who, in one of 



i 4 o FAMOUS SCOTS 

his epigrams, more forcible than delicate, remarked that 
Smollett travailed over the birth of his historical judgments 
so much that he (Wilkes) had often to play the part of the 
critical midwife. 

The next charge, that Smollett was too prone to take his 
information at second hand, cannot be altogether contro- 
verted, though it was not yet the custom of historians to 
betake themselves to the MS. repositories of the country 
for their materials. More mutual reliance was placed by 
historians on each other's bona fides and faculty of critical 
selection than seems to be the case now. But we have it 
on his own assurance that he consulted over three hundred 
authorities for his facts. That number may be small com- 
pared with those eight hundred names which Buckle prints 
at the commencement of his noble and imperishable History 
of Civilisation in England, but in Smollett's day the number 
of his references was considered phenomenal. He greatly 
surpassed Hume in the range and appropriateness of his 
references, and rather prided himself on the collateral 
evidences of facts which he was able to adduce from his 
miscellaneous reading. That Smollett was consciously 
unfair in his judgment of any character in his historical 
works cannot be credited. He was too warm a friend of 
truth to be seduced into wilfully distorting the plain and 
straightforward deductions from ascertained facts. That he 
may have been misled I do not deny, that his political 
predilections may have led him insensibly to colour his 
judgments at times with the jaundice of partisanship, is 
quite possible, yet that such was done deliberately, no 
student of Smollett's character for a moment will credit. 
Many of his political opponents were castigated, it is true, so 
were many of his political friends ; but, on the other hand, 
the fact is to be taken into account that many of his 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 141 

bitterest enemies obtained a just and impartial criticism 
from Smollett when such was denied to them by many of 
the writers numbered among their own friends. Finally, 
that his style was more adapted to the treatment of imagin- 
ative themes than of sober historical narrative, was a charge 
that might have some weight in the middle decades of last 
century. It can have none now. No special style is dis- 
tinctively to be employed in historical composition. It 
affords scope for all. True it is that Echard and his school, 
in the early decades of the eighteenth century, contended 
that history should be written in a style of sober common- 
place altogether divested of ornament, as thereby the 
judgment was not likely to be led astray. But such 
nonsensical reservations have long since been relegated to 
the limbo of exploded theories, and in historical composition 
the brilliancy of a Macaulay and of an Alison finds a place 
as well as the sober sense of a Hallam or a Stubbs ; the 
picturesqueness of a Froude, as well as the earnest vigour 
and tireless industry of a Freeman. Smollett's style, so 
nervous, pointed, and epigrammatic, so full of strength and 
beauty as well as of scintillating sparkle, was somewhat of a 
surprise in his day. Hume's easy, flowing, pithy Saxon, and 
Robertson's stately splendour, had both carried the honours 
in historical composition to the grey metropolis of the North. 
The fact that another Scot, albeit resident in London, 
should repeat the success, and in some respects excel both, 
was the most crushing blow the elder school of history had 
received. Thenceforward we hear nothing of them. Rapin 
and Oldmixon slumbered with the spiders on the remotest 
shelves of the great libraries. Their day was past. A new 
school of British historians had arisen. 

Smollett's historical works, his History of England, his 
Continuation of the History of England^ his Histories of 



142 FAMOUS SCOTS 

France, Italy, and Germany, are characterised by the 
following sterling qualities : — a felicity of method whereby 
the narrative flows on easily and consecutively from begin- 
ning to end, and whereby, through its division into chapters, 
representing definite epochs, one is able to discover with 
ease any specific point that may be desired ; an exhibition 
of the principles whereon just and equitable government 
should proceed, namely, that of a limited monarchy; a 
judicious subordination of the less to the more important 
events in the narrative ; short, pithy, but eminently fair and 
appreciative criticisms of all the more outstanding person- 
ages in the country under treatment, and a convincing 
testimony borne to the axiom that only by national virtue 
and the conservation of national honour can any nation 
either reach greatness or retain it. If Smollett did not 
possess Hume's power of reaching back to first principles 
in tracing the evolution of a country's greatness, or Robert- 
son's stimulating eloquence that fired the heart with noble 
sentiments, he had the virtue, scarcely less valuable, of 
keeping more closely to his theme than either of them, and 
of producing works that read like a romance. If Hume 
were the superior in what may be styled the philosophy of 
history, if Robertson in picturesqueness and eloquence, 
Smollett was the better narrator of the circumstances and 
facts as they actually occurred. In many respects he 
resembles Diderot, and the analogy is not lessened when 
we compare the private lives of the two men. To Smollett 
history was only of value insomuch as we are able to read 
the present by the key of the past, and to influence the 
future by avoiding the mistakes of the past and present. 
Smollett was a patriot in the broad catholic signification of 
the word. He had no sympathy with the patriotism that 
is synonymous with national or racial selfishness. More 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 143 

crimes have stained the annals of humanity under the 
guise of patriotism than can be atoned for by cycles of 
penitence. To Smollett the soul of patriotism was summed 
up in sinking the name of Scot in the generic one of Briton, 
and in endeavouring to stamp out that pitiful provincialism 
that considered one's love of country to be best manifested 
in perpetuating quarrels whereon the mildew of centuries had 
settled. Smollett in his historical works showed himself a 
truer patriot than that. Though a leal-hearted Scot, he was 
likewise a magnanimous-spirited Briton, ready to judge as 
he would wish to be judged. Writing of the Union of 1707, 
he remarks in his Continuation : ' The majority of both 
nations believed that the treaty would produce violent 
convulsions, or, at best, prove ineffectual. But we now see 
it has been attended with none of the calamities that were 
prognosticated, that it quietly took effect, and answered all 
the purposes for which it was intended. Hence we may 
learn that many great difficulties are surmounted because 
they are not seen by those who direct the execution of any 
great project ; and that many great schemes which theory 
deems impracticable will yet succeed in the experiment.' 

Some critics have urged that Smollett might have taken 
a broader view of the sources and progress of national 
expansion and development. Minto rather off-handedly 
designates his style as 'fluent and loose, possessing a 
careless vigour where the subject is naturally exciting,' 
and concluding with the words, ' the history is said to be 
full of errors and inconsistencies.' * Now, this last clause 
is taken word for word from Chambers's Cyclopcedia of 
English Literature ', who took it from Angus's English 
Literature^ who borrowed it from Macaulay, who annexed 
it from the Edinburgh Review \ which journal had originally 
1 Manual of English Prose Literature. 



i 4 4 FAMOUS SCOTS 

adopted it with alterations from Smollett's own prefatory 
remarks in the first edition of the book. How many of 
these authors had read the history for themselves, to see if 
it really contained such errors and inconsistencies? Criticism 
conducted on that mutual-trust principle is very convenient 
for the critic; is it quite fair to the author? Now, any- 
one who faithfully reads Smollett's History of England and 
its Continuation will not discover a larger percentage of 
either errors or inconsistencies than appear in the works of 
his contemporary historians, Tytler, Hume, and Robertson. 
Smollett is as distinguishingly fair and impartial as it was 
possible for one to be, influenced so profoundly by his 
environment as were all the historians of the eighteenth 
century. The mind of literary Europe was already tinged 
by that spiritual unrest and moral callousness that was to 
induce the new birth of the French Revolution. 

As a literary critic, during his tenure of the editorial 
chair of the Critical Reviezv, Smollett's judgments were 
frequently called in question, especially in the case of Dr. 
Grainger, the translator of Tibullus and of the Greek 
dramatists, and author of the Ode to Solitude ; Shebbeare, a 
well-known political writer of the period, whose seditious 
utterances had been chastised; Home, the author of 
Douglas, and Wilkie of the Epigoniad. Now, in nearly all 
the cases wherein exception was taken to the articles, these 
were not written by Smollett. But even as regards those of 
his own composition that have been complained of, careful 
perusal alike of the volume criticised and of the critique 
evince Smollett to have been as just and fair in the 
circumstances as he could well be. For example, the 
opinion he formed of Churchill's Poems was that in 
which the British public within thirty years was to 
acquiesce, — nay, is that which to - day is the pre- 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 145 

vailing literary verdict upon these once popular works. 
Smollett unfortunately left his contributors a perfectly 
free hand. Many of them were men of no principle, who 
permitted private grudges to colour their critical estimate 
of literary works produced by those with whom they had 
some quarrel or disagreement. Smollett was to blame for 
not exercising his editorial scissors more freely on the 
verdicts of his collaborateurs. His own opinions of current 
literature were expressed with a fairness leaving little to be 
desired. Though not a Sainte Beuve in critical appreciation 
of the work of others, though his verdicts never possessed 
the keen spiritual and emotional insight of the famous 
Causeries du Lundi in the Paris Constitutional, still they are 
the fair, honest, outspoken opinions of a man who, as 
Morton said of Knox, c never feared the face of man,' and 
therefore would not be biassed by favour or fear. Dr. 
Johnson was at the same time criticising literature in his 
new Literary Magazine. Interesting it is to compare the 
two opinions on the books they dealt with. Smollett's style 
is well-nigh as distinguishable as Johnson's among his 
fellow-contributors. If the decrees of ■ the Great Cham of 
Literature ' : are more authoritative, they are but little more 
incisive and searching than those of the author of Roderick 
Random. The former had a more extensive vocabulary, 
the latter was the more consummate literary critic. Wit, 
humour, pathos, and epigram were all at the service of 
Smollett, and though, in depth of thought and soaring 
sublimity of reasoning powers, the author of the Rambler 
excelled his contemporary, in the lighter graces of style 
Smollett was the better of the two. Though he had not 

1 The title Smollett gave to Johnson when requesting the aid of 
Wilkes to free Francis Barber, Johnson's black servant, from service 
on board the Stag. It is the older form of Khan. 
IO 



146 FAMOUS SCOTS 

Johnson's Jove-like power of driving home a truth, he 
frequently persuaded, by his calm and lucid logic, where 
the thunder of the Great Cham only repelled. If blame be 
his, then, with regard to the exercise of his critical authority, 
it was due more to sins of omission than of commission, 
more to believing that others were actuated by the same 
high ideals in criticism as himself. In reading some of the 
numbers of the Critical Review for the purposes of this 
biography, nothing struck me more in those papers that 
were plainly from the pen of Smollett, than the power he 
possessed of placing himself at the point of view assumed 
by the writer of the work under criticism, so that he might 
be thoroughly en rapport with the author's sympathies. 
How few critics have either the inclination or the ability 
to do likewise ! 



CHAPTER XII 

SMOLLETT AS POET AND DRAMATIST 

Tradition states that Smollett, on being asked on one 
occasion why he did not write more poetry, replied that he 
had ' no time to be a poet.' The answer can be read in a 
dual sense — either that poetry demanded an absorption so 
complete in its pursuit that all other interests were as naught ; 
or, on the other hand, that his time was so fully occupied 
that he could not devote attention to poetical composition 
without neglecting other things at that time of more value. 
As weighed against his fiction, little regret can be felt by 
any admirer of Smollett, that he did not pursue poetry 
more diligently. The specimens we possess of these fruits 
of his genius are not of such value as to awaken any 
desire to peruse more of his metrical essays. Small in 
bulk though his poetical works are, even these, as well as 
his dramatic compositions, we would gladly have spared in 
exchange for such another novel as Humphrey Clinker. 

Smollett's genius was by no means of that purely imagin- 
ative, highly spiritual type from which great poetical com- 
positions are to be expected. He was rather an unsurpassed 
observer, who, having noted special characteristics of mind 
as being produced by the fortuitous concourse of certain 
incidents, straightway proceeded to expand and idealise 
them ; than a mighty original genius, like Shakespeare, 
Milton, Spenser, Shelley, or Keats, that from the depths of 

M7 



148 FAMOUS SCOTS 

his spiritual consciousness evolved original creations that 
are representative not of any age, but of all time. Smollett 
had none of the isolating power of the true poet, whereby 
for the time he raises his theme into the pure ether of 
imagination, dissociated from the world and all its concerns. 
Smollett loved the world too well to seek to sever himself 
from it. His workshop, his studio, his school, and observ- 
atory, it was in one. Like Balzac, he was more taken up 
with what men did than with what they thought. From 
the outward evidence of action he worked back to the pre- 
disposing thought, not predicting a priori from the thought 
what the action must necessarily be. Therefore, as 
Smollett's genius was more practical than imaginative, 
dealing more with the reproduction of facts than the 
creation of fancies, his poetry rose little above the dead 
level of commonplace. Only in two poems does he rise 
into a distinctively higher altitude of poetic inspiration — 
these are ■ The Tears of Scotland ' and ' The Ode to Inde- 
pendence.' In both cases, however, the influence of 
patriotism and that keen sympathy with the oppressed 
which he always entertained, contributed to impart to the 
compositions in question loftier sentiments and more 
impassioned feelings than would otherwise have been the 
case. We have already seen that the horrors wrought in 
the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 by the Duke of Cumberland 
were on his mind when he wrote ' The Tears of Scotland ' ; 
while the heroism of the noble Corsican Paschal Paoli was 
the stimulating motive in the composition of the latter. 

There is a great difference between the two. The former 
was written in 1746, while the 'Ode to Independence' was 
not produced until the last years of his life, and was not 
published until 1773, when the Messrs. Foulis of Glasgow, 
printers to the University of Glasgow, put it out, with a 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 149 

short Preface and Notes by Professor Richardson. In both, 
the language is spirited and striking, the thoughts elevated 
and just. In the 'Ode' he takes as his models Collins 
and Gray. The first and last stanzas of it — or, more 
properly, the opening strophe and the concluding anti- 
strophe — are the finest in the poem, and are well worthy of 
quotation — 

' Thy spirit, Independence, let me share, 
Lord of the lion-heart and eagle eye : 
Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare, 
Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky. 
Deep in the frozen regions of the North, 
A goddess violated brought thee forth, 
Immortal Liberty, whose look sublime 
Hath bleached the tyrant's cheek in ever-varying clime. 
What time the iron-hearted Gaul, 
With frantic Superstition for his guide, 
Armed with the dagger and the pall, 
The Sons of Woden to the field defied ; 
The ruthless hag by Weser's flood 
In Heaven's name urged the infernal blow, 
And red the stream began to flow, 
The vanquished were baptised with blood. 

Antistrophe. 

Nature I'll court in her sequestered haunts 

By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove or cell, 

Where the poised lark his evening ditty chants, 

And Health and Peace and Contemplation dwell. 

There Study shall with Solitude recline, 

And Friendship pledge me to his fellow-swains ; 

And Toil and Temperance sedately twine 

The slender cord that fluttering life sustains : 

And fearless Poverty shall guard the door, 

And Taste unspoiled the frugal table spread, 

And Industry supply the frugal store, 

And Sleep unbribed his dews refreshing shed ; 



150 FAMOUS SCOTS 

White-mantled Innocence, ethereal sprite, 
Shall chase afar the goblins of the night, 
And Independence o'er the day preside : 
Propitious power! my patron and my pride.' 

His two satires, Advice and Reproof, evince on the part 
of their author the qualities we have already noted — keen 
power of observation, a felicitous deftness in wedding 
sound to sense, considerable force of satiric presentation, 
with humour and wit in rich measure. But there is no 
such elevation as we discover in Johnson's London or The 
Vanity of Human Wishes ■, or in the satiric pieces of Pope 
or Dryden. The moment the poems rise from the con- 
sideration of facts to principles, Smollett becomes tedious 
and prosy. As a song- writer, however, he has made some 
eminently successful essays, the well-known lyric — 

* To fix her : 'twere a task as vain 
To combat April drops of rain,' 

which has been so often set to music, having been written 
by him soon after the publication of Roderick Random. It 
possesses grace, point, and rhythmic harmony — the three 
great desiderata in a good lyric. The following verse has 
a faint echo of the subtle beauty of Wither, Lovelace, 
Herrick, and the Cavalier poets : — 

' She's such a miser eke in love, 
Its joys she'll neither share nor prove, 
Though crowds of gallants gay await 
From her victorious eyes their fate.' 

Of his remaining poems there are only one or two that 
really merit notice. Smollett was too apt to run into the 
opposite extreme from sacrificing sense to sound, and 
prefer a repelling roughness both in metre and assonance 
to altering the sequence of thought in a poem that would 
not have been injured by the change. His Odes to Mirth 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 151 

and to Sleep are marred by being too didactic. His images 
are frequently so recondite as to awaken no corresponding 
ideas in the mind of the reader. His ' Love Elegy ' is in 
imitation of those of Tibullus, and there are several lines 
that are well-nigh as tenderly pathetic as those of its great 
original, while the verses ; On a Young Lady playing on the 
Harpsichord/ so much admired by Sir Walter Scott, are 
undoubtedly amongst his finest efforts for happy union of 
glowing thought and graceful expression — 

'When Sappho struck the quivering wire, 
The throbbing breast was all on fire ; 
And when she raised the vocal lay, 
The captive soul was charmed away : 
But had the nymph possessed with these 
Thy softer, chaster power to please, 
Thy beauteous air of sprightly youth, 
Thy native smiles of artless truth, 
The worm of grief had never preyed 
On the forsaken, love-sick maid ; 
Nor had she mourned an hapless flame, 
Nor dashed on rocks her tender frame.' 

Had Smollett cultivated the art of metrical expression 
more persistently and enthusiastically, there are sufficient 
indications to show that he might have produced work 
which, if not in the very highest grade of excellence in 
the school presided over by Collins, Gray, and Goldsmith, 
would have attained a standard sufficiently worthy to be 
ranked among the minor products of that decidedly 
prosaic epoch. We need not regret his abstention. 

Finally, in the drama Smollett's restless genius sought 
expression at two periods of his life when his hopes were 
at their highest. In his nineteenth year, we have seen that 
the fruit of his historical studies, and his wanderings in the 



i 5 2 FAMOUS SCOTS 

glorious Elizabethan drama, had been given to the world in 
The Regicide — a drama founded on the murder of James I. 
of Scotland. Written at that point in a youth's life when the 
Will o' the Wisp of literary fame seemed an angel of light, 
when the prizes incident on intellectual eminence had only 
recently attracted his gaze, and when his judgment, there- 
fore, was dazzled by the expectation of reaching such a 
reputation as his countrymen Thomson, Mallet, and 
Arbuthnot had already won, it had all the faults though but 
few of the merits of a youthful production. The other 
piece, The Reprisal ; or, The Tars of Old England, was 
executed when his fame was assured, when he was no 
longer the tyro in composition, but the editor of the Critical 
Review and a critic of the works of others. It is widely 
different from the Regicide, both in style, method, motive, 
and execution. Yet a beginner in the work of criticism 
could detect that both were written by the same hand. 
The Regicide, as a drama, is, as we have already said, a very 
mediocre production. Dealing with a period of Scottish 
history where there was scope for the aids of a brilliant 
historic background and of the customs and costumes of 
the time, Smollett has availed himself of none of these. 
The characters of the drama are men and women of the 
eighteenth century, masquerading in anomalous forms of 
speech and mysterious lines of action, which no one out of 
Bedlam would have ever considered befitting a king or his 
nobility. For example, in the play, in place of the dramatis 
persona being designated as ' James i., King of Scotland,' 
and ' Joanna Beaufort, Queen of Scotland,' we have simply 
' King ' and ' Queen,' while the nobles and conspirators 
bear such utterly inappropriate and unhistoric names as 
Angus, Dunbar, Ramsay, Stuart, Grime, and Cattan. The 
action is spasmodic and jerky, altogether lacking in artistic 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 153 

dramatic dovetailing of incidents into each other and of 
symmetrical consecutiveness of circumstance. James lacks 
heroism, dignity, and power; Grime — probably meant for 
Sir Robert Graham — and Athol are very declamatory 
villains, who, if they put off as much time in firing off 
expletives at the real scene of the murder, must inevitably 
have permitted their victim to escape. We seem to be 
reading a play of Dekker's or Greene's, so very elementary 
is the stagecraft displayed in contriving exits and entrances 
for the personages. The characters are all more or less 
wooden. They talk in stilted, high-flown language, such as 
a boy of nineteen would suppose the courtiers of a monarch 
like James 1. to employ. They never for a moment 
descend from their stilts; and even in dying, Dunbar 
and Eleonora declaim to the audience in rounded and 
rhetorical periods. Eleonora philosophises as follows 
within a second or two of her death : — 

1 Life has its various seasons as the year ; 
And after clustering autumn — but I faint, 
Support me nearer — in rich harvest's rear 
Bleak winter must have lagged. Oh I now I feel 
The leaden hand of death lie heavy on me— 
Thine image swims before my straining eye : 
And now it disappears. Speak — bid adieu 
To the lost Eleonora. Not a word? 
Not one farewell? Alas, that dismal groan 
Is eloquent distress ! Celestial powers, 
Protect my father; show'r upon his— Oh ! [Dies.]' 

Whereupon Dunbar also replies in similar heroics as death 
approaches — 

* There fled the purest soul that ever dwelt 
In mortal clay ! I come, my love, I come. 
Where now the rosy tincture of these lips ! 



i 5 4 FAMOUS SCOTS 

The smile that grace ineffable diffused ! 

The glance that smote the soul with silent wonder ! 

The voice that soothed the anguish of disease ' — 

After which he also cries ■ Oh ! ' and dies. Now, it 
is very easy to laugh at all this, and to make fun 
of the inappropriate 'hifalutin.' But, dangerously near 
bombast though it is, the scene has a pathetic power in it, 
which, after discounting all its demerits, brings out the 
balance on the right side of the ledger of praise and blame. 
Boyish and immature, full of weak and silly passages as 
the drama is, there are, nevertheless, portions of it which 
give presage of the genius lying latent beneath the 
rant and fustian. Mediocre though the piece be, viewed 
as a whole, isolated passages and lines could be 
selected from it of the pure imaginative and in- 
tellectual ore, — lines and passages, in fine, that lovers of 
Smollett's genius treasure in their hearts as worthy of the 
master. Such a passage as the following, being one of the 
speeches addressed by Dunbar to Eleonora, is aflame with 
the fiery glow of supreme passion — 

' O thy words 
Would fire the hoary hermit's languid soul 
With ecstasies of pride ! How then shall I, 
Elate with every vainer hope that warms 
The aspiring thought of youth, thy praise sustain 
With moderation? Cruelly benign, 
Thou hast adorned the victim ; but alas ! 
Thou likewise giv'st the blow ! Though Nature's hand 
With so much art has blended every grace 
In thy enchanting form, that every eye 
With transport views thee, and conveys unseen 
The soft infection to the vanquished soul, 
Yet wilt thou not the gentle passion own 
That vindicates thy sway ! ' 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 155 

And this, one of Eleonora's replies to Dunbar, is pervaded 
by an exquisite pathos, as tender as it is true — 

' O wondrous power 
Of love beneficent ! O generous youth, 
What recompense (thus bankrupt as I am) 
Shall speak my grateful soul? A poor return 
Cold friendship renders to the fervid hope 
Of fond desire ! ' 

The Reprisal, on the other hand, is little more than a 
comedietta. It has all the merits of a light, farcical, after- 
dinner piece, all the faults of a composition that savours 
more of froth and folly than aught else. The characters 
of the lovers, Heartly and Harriet, are lightly etched in ; 
but those of Oclabber, an Irish lieutenant, and Maclaymore, 
a Scots captain, both in the French service, are drawn with 
great humour and power. Haulyard the midshipman, 
Lyon the lieutenant, and Block the sailor, all in the 
English navy, are spirited creations, designed to represent 
the seamen of Old England at their best. The incidents 
of the drama are full of life and movement, and the 
characters are well contrasted as differentiated types. The 
language, however, is still somewhat stilted and pedantic, 
so that one can easily detect, amidst all the fun and frolic 
of The Reprisal^ the same hand that executed the dark and 
gloomy Regicide. 

And now, with the great body of his work before us, 
looking back also upon all he did, and thought, and said 
for the good of his brethren of mankind, what is the ulti- 
mate verdict which Time has passed on his life and 
labours? Secure of his niche in the very front rank of 
the great fathers of English fiction, Smollett's name and 
literary legacy are precious possessions in the treasure-house 
of British fiction. Though he is not a ' Scots novelist ' in 



156 FAMOUS SCOTS 

the restricted sense of the term as applied to the writers of 
these latter days, he has done much to make Scotsmen proud 
that their country had produced such a son. The works 
he has executed are assuredly an imperishable memorial. 
But even more than they do we cherish the example he has 
set of stern, unflinching devotion to duty, of an honesty that 
has never been impugned, and of a mighty love for the 
welfare and the improvement of his brethren of mankind. 
Every line he wrote was permeated by this intense love of 
his fellows, and for the amelioration of the lot of the 
downtrodden he was ready to face both obloquy and 
danger. A Scot, in the narrow sense of the word, 
he cannot be considered. As a Briton he will be loved 
and cherished by a larger family of readers than would be 
the case did he only appeal to the sympathies of Scotland 
and the Scots. But though this is so, it does not lessen the 
regard wherewith his countrymen regard him. After the 
inspired singer of 'Auld Langsyne,' — after the mighty 
magician who created such diverse types as Baron Brad- 
wardine, Vich Ian Vohr, Dominie Sampson, Di Vernon, 
Halbert Glendinning, Jeannie Deans, Rob Roy, and Dugald 
Dalgetty, — comes he whose children three — Roderick 
Random, Peregrine Pickle, and Matthew Bramble — will 
find readers while our language lasts. Proud though we 
be as Britons to own such a genius as of our tongue, 
prouder still are we, as Scots, to hail him as akin to us in 
blood ; and so in a double sense rejoicing in his greatness 
and his glory, we once more bid him farewell ! 



